Covestro and Tekmar Energy have signed a cooperation agreement on subsea cable protection for Chinese offshore wind market, set to grow towards 10GW of capacity within the next three to five years.
Both companies will collaborate on the development of Cable Protection Systems for subsea energy cables at vulnerable locations from the wave and tidal action amongst other external forces. The development covers many solutions from bend stiffeners to bend restrictors, many of which are using TEKLINK® CPS developed by Tekmar based on Covestro specialty elastomers materials.
As part of the cooperation agreement, Covestro will supply elastomer casting machinery, elastomer systems as well as processing know-how to enable the manufacturing of the cable protection systems in China developed by Tekmar in the UK.
“Thanks to this cooperation agreement, we welcome the opportunity to strengthen our partnership with Tekmar” , said Michael Friede , CEO & President of Covestro Elastomers SAS. ”We both established our technologies as the reference point for cable protection for offshore wind farms in Europe. We aim to build on these successes and act as vanguard in China. We look forward to further develop and introduce our new materials and technology for Tekmar’s future generation products.”
James Ritchie , chief executive officer at Tekmar, said: “The China Offshore Wind Market is an exciting expansion opportunity for Tekmar as it will reinforce our market leading position on a global basis. Our proven solution is already being installed in the region on the Formosa offshore wind farm project in Taiwan. Further we look forward to working in collaboration with our proven EU supplier Covestro, who has resources and facilities in Shanghai that will help us both to develop this emerging market.”