Van Oord Vessel Gets Baltic Project

Dutch maritime contracting company Royal Van Oord has signed a contract with the Swedish energy company Vattenfall for the transport and installation of the foundations for Kriegers Flak wind farm.

Van Oord, international contractor specialising in dredging, marine engineering and offshore projects (oil, gas and wind) said that it will install the project’s 72 monopiles and transition pieces.

With a production capacity of just over 600 MW Kriegers Flak will be Denmark’s largest offshore wind farm and is scheduled to be fully operational by the end of 2021.

The Danish Kriegers Flak offshore wind farm is constructed in the Baltic Sea across a range of 15 to 40 kilometres from the Danish coast.

The monopiles will be transported floating from Rostock, Germany and the transition pieces will be transported on barges from Aalborg, Denmark to the project location.

"Creating a sustainable energy system is one of the key challenges of this time. Van Oord wants to lead this development in offshore wind. With the construction of the Kriegers Flak offshore wind farm we make another significant contribution towards these goals," said Arnoud Kuis, Director offshore wind.

Van Oord has been involved in building offshore wind farms since 2002. For the installation of the foundations Van Oord deploys its 8,000-tonne heavy lift installation vessel Svanen. So far the vessel has installed almost 650 foundations throughout Europe.

The Svanen has installed the vast majority of monopiles in the Baltic Sea including the Anholt, Baltic 2 and Arkona projects. The contract for the installation work at Kriegers Flak is another sign of the competitiveness of Van Oord’s heavy lift installation vessel.