Kersten Middle East Cracks Offshore Wind Market with East Anglia ONE J-Tubes

Kersten Middle East, part of the Kersten Group, has won a contract to produce a total of 330 J-tubes for the 714MW East Anglia ONE offshore wind farm.

J-tubes are steel tubes shaped in a J- and/or S-form attached to a foundation. They are used to guide the export power cables from the turbine to the seabed.

“Our team and I are very proud to have been awarded the J-tubes for East Anglia ONE project,” said Mike Minten, general manager at Kersten Middle East.

“We will produce a total of 330 J-tubes for this project. Our scope involves the bending of seamless tubes CHS 457 x 12.5/ 20.0mm with a S355J2H grade and in order to comply to the strict European Offshore wind specifications all J-Tubes will be 100% Magnetical Particle inspected (MPI). The J-tubes are Just-In-Time delivered to different Lamprell Energy Ltd. yards in Hamriya – Sharjah and Jebel Ali – Dubai.”

Iberdrola’s East Anglia ONE is the world’s largest offshore wind farm under construction. The wind farm consists of 102 Siemens 7MW wind turbines and foundations located in the eastern part of England in the North Sea.

The turbines have grounded three-legged jacket foundations. These foundations weigh 845 tonnes and stand at 65 metres tall. The generated electricity of all turbines will be collected at the offshore substation platform and transferred to shore.

Lamprell is tasked with constructing 60 jacket foundations for the wind farm which are scheduled for delivery between March and October 2018. The remaining 42 jackets will be built and delivered by the Navantia-Windar consortium.

This is Kersten Middle East’s first offshore wind project. The European factories of the Kersten Group supply offshore wind components on a regular basis.

”The production of the East Anglia ONE J-tubes is a great opportunity to show the offshore wind industry that we are very capable of producing these heavy duty offshore components with European quality in the Middle East,” Minten said.