Inch Cape’s offshore construction brings UK port boost
From the highly visible arrival of huge foundation components in Leith to building a new operations facility, nine UK ports and their local supply chain clusters will play varying key roles in support of Inch Cape during its offshore construction and beyond.
By facilitating investment, jobs, and infrastructure upgrades through a chain of harbours from the Scottish Highlands down to the North East of England, the project is contributing to the transformation of coastal economies.
The ports will not only provide Inch Cape with quayside space and berths for the survey, support and installation vessels but also the related storage and warehousing facilities, port and marine services, and access to local suppliers for the likes of grillage fabrication and installation, inspection and other critical activities. Key will be the provision of the skilled people needed to carry out the offloading and load out activities, marshalling and completion works.
Edinburgh’s Port of Leith is the most prominent contributor with the ongoing marshalling and completion activity for the project’s foundation components including the monopiles, jacket foundations, transition pieces and pin piles. The towering 83-metre jackets have created a new skyline for the Scottish capital and the arrival, loading and departure of vessels continues to draw weekend crowds at neighbouring Lighthouse Park.
Heavy lift vessels Les Alizés and 218-metre Seaway Alfa Lift, one of the longest vessels to ever use the port’s new Charles Hammond Berth, will shuttle all the components from the port to the project’s offshore site for installation. The work will create more than 100 jobs at its peak, with Forth Ports as principal contractor and facilitating local employment and supply chain benefits.
Contracts with Inch Cape have been the catalyst for improvements to port infrastructure, ensuring the project has legacy benefits beyond its own needs.
Having secured the Inch Cape contract, Forth Ports privately invested £50 million in enhancing the marine access, infrastructure and plant and equipment at the Port of Leith. Forth Ports’ Port of Dundee will also gain from the Inch Cape work as the project’s 72 turbines will be marshalled from the port laydown area which has been expanded to now cover almost 190,000 square metres (19 hectares).
Callum Hogan, Asset Manager, Forth Projects said: “Forth Ports is one of the country’s largest port groups, owning and operating eight ports across the UK including Leith, Grangemouth, Dundee and Rosyth in Scotland. Being part of this group means that Forth Projects benefits from a strong investment commitment across the port business in supply chain solutions.
“At our bespoke purpose-built renewables hubs in Leith and Dundee, we are able to offer an unrivalled service for major offshore wind projects. Inch Cape is the largest contract secured to date for Forth Ports and we are well under way in Leith, with Dundee due to start later this year.”
The entrance channel and quayside at Dundee will be dredged to enable access for Wind Mover, the vessel installing the project’s turbines. This new-build is one of the next generation class of vessel so the dredging will also help the port support future Scottish offshore wind farms. Turbine supplier Vestas will utilise the local supply chain for scopes including civil works to mobilise the site, plant machinery, engineering, bunkering, scaffolding and general port services.
Inch Cape’s offshore construction is being run from the Port of Montrose, with daily crew transfer vessel departures to the offshore site and monitoring from the marine coordination centre. The port is also where the project’s £6.5 million operations and maintenance base is under construction by local contractor Pert Bruce, along with new pontoons to accommodate crew transfer vessels.
Chief Executive Officer of Montrose Port Authority Captain Tom Hutchison said: “Inch Cape represents exactly the kind of transformative partnership that Montrose Port has been working towards. To see a project of this scale choosing to base both its construction office and operations & maintenance (O&M) activities here speaks volumes to the confidence in what this port and region can deliver.
“We are particularly pleased to see local businesses like Pert Bruce Construction playing a key role in building Inch Cape’s O&M base in our port. That is how an energy transition should work, strengthening the local supply chain and delivering real benefits to local communities. The commitment also doesn’t stop at construction. Knowing that Inch Cape intends to employ local people to operate and maintain the wind farm for decades is something that it incredibly important to us.”
By choosing the Port of Montrose as its permanent home and using crew transfer vessels that will travel daily to site for its offshore work, the project will create at least 50 long-term skilled jobs for local people.
in the Port of Montose
Roughly 320 kilometres south, a port in the North East of England is also playing a key role for Inch Cape as the mobilisation port for both the project’s two export cables. The Port of Blyth has been the chosen base for cable installation vessel CMOS Installer and cable jointing vessel North Sea Giant with lead contractor Enshore Subsea making strong use of local suppliers.
Port of Blyth Chief Executive, Martin Lawlor OBE said: “With more than 25 years’ experience supporting the offshore wind sector, the Inch Cape project further reinforces the Port of Blyth’s reputation as a primary UK offshore energy hub with specialist expertise in cable handling and mobilisation. Projects like this also demonstrate the strength of the supply chain at the Port, with businesses working together to deliver a seamless service for our customers.”
from Port of Blyth
In North East Scotland, the Cromarty Firth is where Seaway7 heavy lift vessel Alfa Lift will be mobilised as it prepares to install the project’s 54 transition pieces (TPs), 18 jacket foundations and the 54 pin piles which fix the jackets to the seabed. The Port of Cromarty Firth is the statutory harbour authority for the Cromarty Firth including the Invergordon Service Base where the enormous frame that will guide the pin piles during installation will also be mobilised after arrival on another heavy lift vessel Seaway Eagle. The significant work required for this mobilisation activity includes the fabrication and installation of grillages for the TPs, pin piles, jackets and for the pile installation frame.
With a 20-year track-record in renewables construction, including 10 in offshore wind, the team at the Port of Cromarty Firth recognises the important role ports play in facilitating projects like Inch Cape and securing home-grown energy production.
The Port of Cromarty Firth’s Head of Strategy and Business Development, Joanne Allday said: “The work on Inch Cape will create further lessons learned to ensure Scotland, and the Cromarty Firth, continually improves and becomes even better at delivering these large work scopes”.
Also in the Highlands, Ardersier Port near Inverness will also see Inch Cape vessels as they use the Haventus facility for equipment maintenance and ongoing project support. And around the coast in Scotland’s offshore energy capital, the national strategic asset Port of Aberdeen has been used for more than 12-months as the base for the vessels carrying out prepare-for-construction work for Inch Cape. This works has specifically covered the unexploded ordnance removal and ongoing boulder relocation works. Subsea provider N-Sea vessels including GeoRanger, FS Aries and Pathfinder have utilised quays at the port and local suppliers for marine services, crew changes, supplies and vessel support.
On the northern side of the Forth of Firth, the Port of Rosyth has also been used for the project, specifically for logistics and port calls by both vessel contractors Jan de Nul and Enshore Subsea, with the neighbouring Port of Burntisland, also used as the base for vessels carrying out pre-construction surveys and by offshore construction contractor OEG for demarcation buoy launching and maintenance.
Through its deliberate use of local ports, Inch Cape has woven the project into the fabric of local coastal economies. The port operators make use of their own nearby supply chains, creating a positive ripple effect across each of the eight geographic areas, bringing business, jobs and experience to be leverage on future offshore wind projects.
Along with the infrastructure upgrades, dredged channels, and expanded laydown areas — creating a legacy long-after construction is complete – Inch Cape is enhancing Britain’s eastern coast, one port at a time.
