Danish wind turbine manufacturer Vestas has signed an agreement for 70 hectares of land at the Port of Sheerness in Kent, UK, on which it hopes to build a facility to manufacture its new purpose-built offshore wind turbine.
Vestas has secured exclusive rights to the land, with the option lasting for approximately one year with the possibility to extend for another 12 months.
The company hopes to begin serial production of the V164-7.0 MW turbine in 2015, and is planning to make the necessary investment to turn the option into a full lease and build the extensive new production facilities.
The company said the move would create more than 2,000 direct and indirect new jobs, provided the V164-7.0 MW order pipeline materialises as expected. Vestas said that in order to make this happen, it was looking forward to seeing the UK government create the “best possible terms” for the offshore wind industry to truly take off and make job creation a reality.
The company said it wanted to see market and regulatory certainty from a transparent, long-term and stable policy framework; as well as public investment support to de-risk and reduce the large infrastructural investments required to build a facility of such proportions.
Commenting, Anders Søe-Jensen, president of Vestas Offshore, said: “We have shown our intentions to make major investments and subsequent job creation, but it is evident that we don’t just jump head first into an investment of this size. We need to make sure it makes sense business wise.
“Before our customers can provide us with the needed order pipeline, they need to see stability in the market and a long term political and regulatory certainty that ensures their business case.”
With the world’s largest offshore wind market, the UK has an extensive offshore project pipeline, Vestas said. The UK’s Round 3 projects alone account for 32GW.
