Aibel has awarded a contract to the Manchester-based Granada Material Handling Ltd to design, manufacture, deliver and commission 10 davit crane units for the 30MW Hywind Scotland Pilot Park, the world’s first floating wind farm situated off Peterhead, Aberdeenshire.
Two Granada Python crane units, specifically designed for the Hywind floating wind farm, will be fitted to each of the 5 floating platforms. Each Python unit measures approximately 4 metres in height, 5.3 metres in radius, and weighs 3,000 kilograms.
Due to the floating nature of the Hywind foundations the cranes have also been engineered to cope with larger than normal foundation motions. The maximum lifting capacity of 2,000 kilograms is needed to hoist the heavier serviceable components from the supply vessel to the laydown area on the platforms of the transition piece platform.
The company is now looking to place orders and sub-contract specialist areas of work to other UK businesses, and will deliver the crane units over a 2 month period.
“Securing this contract has been a real team effort by the Granada Renewable product and service division. The Hywind contract is not only great news for Granada but also for our UK based supply chain. Granada has ambitious plans for this market sector and having supplied over 500 offshore davits is the UK’s leading offshore wind farm davit crane supplier,’’ Mark Sidwell, director of Granada Material Handling Ltd, said.
“We are currently working with designers, wind farm developers and turbine manufacturers to further enhance the product range to ensure the very latest developments in lifting technology are made available to the rapidly expanding and ever developing offshore renewable market.”
Statoil, the owner and developer of Hywind, put Aibel in charge of procurement of material and equipment for the project in February 2016. The new task was an amendment to the existing contract between the two companies which saw Aibel carry out a FEED study, and provide engineering and management assistance on the project.