Offshore staff
ZWEVEGEM, Belgium — Bekaert has joined the recently launched Tailwind project, which will devise mooring and anchoring systems for floating offshore wind farm developments.
The Belgian company is a specialist in steel wire and coating technology, and it also has synthetic rope manufacturing facilities in Scotland.
The Tailwind consortium members are the Norwegian Geotechnical Institute, Technische Universiteit Delft (Netherlands), Danmarks Tekniske Universitet (Denmark), SINTEF Ocean (Norway), Fundación Tecnalia Research & Innovation (Spain), Nautilus Floating Solutions (Spain), Bekaert (Belgium), Subsea7 Norway, Fondazione ICONS (Italy), Clarke Modet Y Compania (Spain), NKT Cables Group (Denmark), and University of Southampton (UK).
They aim to engage with various groups to investigate new technical developments that could bring down the costs of floating offshore wind, notably the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) produced, in part through the adoption of new mooring and anchoring solutions.
One aim is to avoid bottlenecks and major dependency on the supply chain.
The project has funding from the EU’s Horizon Program.
In late 2023, Bekaert acquired 75% of shares in Scotland-based Flintstone Technology Ltd., which provides mooring technology, systems design and testing capabilities for the global offshore energy markets.
04.04.2024
