Nervion Naval Offshore, a subsidiary of the Spanish Amper Group, has bought the factory that Siemens Gamesa had built in As Somozas, A Coruña, for wind turbine blade production. The Bilbao-based company plans to open a fabrication facility for jacket and floating offshore wind foundations there as soon as in the second half of this year.
The site of the now-former Siemens Gamesa facilities offers more than 35,000 m2 of covered halls, 5,000 m2 of painting halls, an office building, and 65,000 m2 of land, according to its new owner.
Nervion says that, with these specifications on hand, the site multiplies the opportunities for the manufacture of primary and secondary components for jacket foundations and floating wind foundations, which sets the stage for the industrialisation and modernisation of the serial production of these offshore wind components.
Furthermore, the Somozas site will complement the one Nervion plans to build at the Ferrol Outer Port, according to the company, since they are less than a 25-minute-drive away from each other.
Siemens Gamesa closed the Somozas blade factory back in 2021, after the order book for the blade model it had been producing there dried out by that time as there was no longer demand in the Spanish market.
Revamping and upgrading the plant, which was producing blades for the SG 2.X-114 wind turbine model, to manufacture the larger blades demanded by the market was also not an option since it was not competitive enough in this regard. Also, due to site and logistic constraints, Siemens Gamesa would not had been able to produce the largest blades it has in its portfolio.
The sale of the facilities to Nervion is part of a reindustrialisation agreement the company made with the worker unions in Spain. The agreement included the search and identification of an investor that would contribute to the continuity of the economic activity in the area and to maintaining and creating employment.
In addition to the reindustrialisation programme, Siemens Gamesa launched an outplacement plan that re-employed 182 of the 189 employees who signed up for this plan, mainly through outplacements in other companies.
As for Nervion, the company has been involved in the offshore wind sector for a while now. In 2020, Nervion built 20 upper jackets for the Moray East offshore wind farm, Scotland’s largest offshore wind farm, under a contract with its compatriot Navantia.
Last year, Nervion Naval Offshore emerged as one of the partners who signed a collaboration agreement to develop and market platform technology for floating offshore wind. Under the agreement, Spain’s SENER Renewable Investments and Nervion are now developing a semi-submersible floating steel platform for offshore wind turbines with a power in excess of 15 MW.