SeAH Wind bags $1.1 bn wind turbine monopile order in UK

South Korean steelmaker SeAH Steel Holdings Corp. said on Thursday its UK subsidiary SeAH Wind Ltd. has won a £900 million ($1.1 billion) order from Swedish utility Vattenfall AB to build monopiles for offshore wind power generators to be installed in the North Sea off the English coast until 2027.  

According to the contract, SeAH Wind will supply foundations for offshore wind turbines to be set up for the Norfolk Vanguard project that will produce 2.8 gigawatts (GW) of electricity, enough to power 1.95 million homes annually.

The wind farm is located more than 47 kilometers from the Norfolk coast, and the UK government awarded the project to Vattenfall in early 2022 as part of its plan to ramp up the country’s offshore wind capacity to 50 GW from around 14 GW to meet its climate targets and boost energy security.

The Korean company will build XXL monopiles up to 11 meters in diameter, weigh 2,250 tons with length up to 95 meters.

Monopiles are the basic structure of an offshore wind turbine. A typical wind power generator consists of four parts –  blades, wind turbine, tower and substructure, including a monopile.

SeAH Wind will deliver the foundations for the Norfolk Vanguard project by the end of 2027 in phases.

THREE-YEAR WORTH ORDERS

This is the second major monopile order for SeAH Wind, which was established by SeAH Steel Holdings in the UK as the country’s sole monopile producer in 2020.

Combined with its first major monopile orders for Hornsea 3, SeAH Wind has secured an order backlog enough for three years after the anticipated commencement of mass-production at its UK factory in the first half of 2025.

Located 160 km from the Yorkshire coast, Hornsea 3 is a project to build an offshore wind farm with a capacity of 2,852 MW, enough to power about 3.2 million UK homes.

As a designated wind energy partner of the UK government, SeAH Wind is currently building a monopile plant in South Teesside, Middlesbrough, North Yorkshire, with an annual production capacity of 240,000 tons of super-sized products.

The company will invest £300 million in total to build the world’s largest offshore wind turbine monopile factory by 2024.

Its parent SeAH Steel Holdings entered the offshore wind energy market in 2017 as part of its efforts to diversify its business portfolio centered around welded steel pipes.

Write to Mi-Sun Kang at misunny@hankyung.com

Sookyung Seo edited this article.