Norway to Get Floating Wind Foundation Production and Assembly Facility

August 17, 2023, by Adrijana Buljan

Norwegian company WindWorks Jelsa, established in 2020, and Swiss construction company Implenia have signed an investment and a shareholders’ agreement to develop a production and assembly facility for large concrete or steel structures for the floating wind industry on Norway’s west coast.

WindWorks Jelsa: Visualization of the future production and assembly facility for the floating offshore wind industry in Jelsa, Norway; Image: ©Implenia

The aim for WindWorks Jelsa’s facility, planned to be built at Jelsa in Suldal municipality, is to build 70 floating offshore wind turbines per year.

“The goal of WindWorks Jelsa is to become a key partner of the growing floating offshore wind industry across Europe, by building floating wind turbines on the West coast of Norway for a total output of one gigawatt per year”, Implenia states in a press release.

The agreements follow the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) that Implenia and WindWorks Jelsa signed in October 2022, under which the companies agreed to develop and operate serial production of concrete foundations for floating wind farms using cost-effective production processes, automation, and the possible use of innovative technological solutions.

WindWorks Jelsa was established in 2020 by NorSea, Suldal municipality, and Ryfylke IKS, with Norsk Stein as a partner, to explore the possibility of transforming a quarry at Jelsa into a large-scale, low-carbon-footprint site for building and assembling floating wind turbines.

Now, Implenia and NorSea will become equal minority shareholders in WindWorks Jelsa with approximately 41 per cent each.

The project will be developed in several phases from 2023 to 2032, leading to a production and assembly area of 800,000 square metres, including warehouses and workshops, purpose-designed launching systems as well as heavy load quays.

Under the signed agreement, Implenia committed to two small investment tranches in 2023 and 2024, with the first, “pre-production” phase taking place from 2023 to 2026.