A2SEA has signed a contract with Chinese company, COSCO Shipyard Group Co., Ltd., for the construction of a new vessel specially designed for the purpose of installation of offshore wind turbines. The contract has a value of USD 139 million (approx. DKK 820 million).

A2SEA is a market leader within installation services for the construction of offshore wind farms.

The new vessel is expected to be delivered in the second half of 2012 and have the name SEA INSTALLER. It will be a jack-up vessel optimized to operate at water depths of up to 45 meters and it will therefore be well-fitted for the installation of upcoming offshore wind projects in the UK as well as in other offshore wind markets.

"An increasing number of offshore wind projects in the near future will lead to even higher demands for installation vessels than already seen today. With a new state of the art vessel, A2SEA will be able to meet our customers' future demands and hold on to our position as the leading supplier of installation services," says Jens Frederik Hansen, CEO at A2SEA.

Bringing down the installation time is an important factor in the ongoing work of industrializing the process to bring down the cost of constructing offshore wind farms. It has therefore been important to design SEA INSTALLER to be able to carry eight to ten wind turbines at a time which is significantly more than the capacity of the vessels which are currently available in the market.

A2SEA is currently owned by DONG Energy. On June 29th 2010 it was announced that Siemens will become a shareholder in A2SEA through subscription of new shares. Closing of this agreement is expected in Q4 2010.

Tags: A2SEA