HARCO Lands Major Offshore Wind Contract with Vattenfall

Vattenfall has awarded Denmark’s HARCO Heavy Lifting with the contract to provide main component exchange services across five offshore wind farms in the United Kingdom from 2022 to 2025.

The five offshore wind farms are Kentish Flats, Kentish Flats Extension, Thanet, Ormonde, and Aberdeen Bay (European Offshore Deployment Centre (EOWDC)).

The wind farms comprise a total of 186 turbines with a combined capacity of 686.3 MW.

HARCO Heavy Lifting started to exchange main components in cooperation with Vattenfall’s MCE team in 2020, and has been exchanging gearboxes, generators, and main shafts on Vattenfall’s wind farms in the UK, Germany, Sweden, and Denmark. Based on this cooperation, HARCO has been awarded the UK main component exchange contract for the next three years, the Esbjerg-based company said.

”With this contract, we emphasize our focus on being absolute frontrunners in optimizing offshore MCE assignments. Ensuring optimum synergies for both us and Vattenfall, HARCO is currently in the process of establishing a HARCO entity in the UK. This will take 4-6 months to implement, but we believe that this will enable us in supporting our customers even better than today,” said Henrik Harkes, CEO at HARCO Heavy Lifting.

The scope of work is the exchange of gearboxes, generators, main shafts, and blades. Furthermore, HARCO will supply hand tools, special tools, and hydraulic tools for all component exchanges.

”Our experiences with HARCO have shown us their flexibility and efficiency, which enables optimization of our offshore operations. This includes lowering of the overall cost, by reducing Jack-up charter rates and simultaneously increasing turbine availability,” Vattenfall’s MCE Supervisor Karl Jørgensen said.

The negotiation started at the beginning of September 2021, and the final contract was signed in December 2021. Resource planning has started, and the on-site work is expected to start end of January 2022, HARCO said.

”We have been working with HARCO Heavy Lifting on Main Component Exchanges for approx. 2 years and see HARCO as a highly professional supplier of specialized manpower,” said Claus Pedersen MCE Supervisor from Vattenfall Wind Power’s specialized main component exchange department.

”Closing this contract with HARCO ensures Vattenfall a committed and highly competent supplier of specialized services, and we look forward to valuable cooperation for the next 3 + years.”

HARCO Heavy Lifting specializes in the handling, servicing, and installation of offshore wind turbines. The company started operating in January 2020.