Varvsudden, Heavy Industry Park of Öresund, plans to set up a production facility for offshore wind foundations at its site in Sweden. The company awarded Himec Solutions the role of a technical adviser covering design and business development of the production facility.
The two companies have come up with two designs for an area of approximately 125,000 square meters, after working together for almost a year. The designs consist of two options for the area, one proposing a facility for the production of large jacket foundations, and the other focused on large monopiles and their corresponding transitions pieces.
The estimated yearly capacity is up to 180,000+ tonnes per year.
Varvsudden’s site is located close to Malmo and Copenhagen, Denmark. The company stated that this is an ideal location for heavy foundation production for the offshore wind industry, especially for the northern offshore wind power market, and will help contribute to Sweden’s energy goal to run the country entirely on renewable energy by 2040.
“We are convinced that Sweden and our location in Landskrona give us access to the best engineers in the world and the site location provides the necessary conditions that enable us to design and build production facilities supporting renewable, modern, high-quality and profitable production,” said Tonny Hansen , Managing Director at Varvsudden.
Hansen pointed to the capacity demand from the growing wind industry and the demand for reducing the cost of energy being some of the challenges in the sector. In line with this, Sweden should compete with low-cost countries, however instead of competing with the lowest price Varvsudden targeted early development of smart design production concepts together with innovative solutions.
“We have to be uncompromising in our pursuit towards high quality as well as include the sustainability aspect and optimize our processes using the latest technology to deliver profitable production for the offshore wind power business,” Hansen said.
When asked by Offshore WIND whether the production facility would be used by Varvsudden to produce the foundations itself or it is developed for usage by other foundation manufacturers, Tonny Hansen said that both scenarios are being taken into consideration. “We have had great response from the market, and we’re now in the phase where we speak and have meetings with different companies to see who could be the next one at Varvsudden,” Hansen added.