Van Oord to Christen Nexus on Saturday

Van Oord’s first cable-laying vessel for constructing offshore wind parks, Nexus, will be christened on Saturday, 7 March.

The vessel will be christened by J. Damen-Carli, the wife of K. Damen, member of the supervisory board at Van Oord and chairman of Damen Shipyards Group, in the presence of Van Oord’s guests and employees.

Prior to the christening Van Oord is organising a tour of the vessel for students and business contacts on Friday, 6 March.

The vessel was built by Damen Shipyards Group at its shipyard in Galati, Romania. The vessel is nearly 123 metres long and more than 27 metres in the beam. The Nexus has been equipped with a cable carrousel with a capacity of 5,000 tonnes to install long export cables. There are accommodations for 90 people on board. Nexus is the Latin word for connection; a suitable name for a ship that will connect offshore wind turbines with each other and to the mainland, the company wrote.

The first project for the Nexus will be the Gemini offshore wind park that will be built 85 kilometres off the coast of Groningen. The construction phase has started and will be fully operational in 2017. The 600 MW wind park will consist of 150 wind turbines with a capacity of 4 MW each. After construction, the park will deliver electricity to more than 1.5 million people. Van Oord is involved in the Gemini project in two ways. First, as a 10% shareholder in the project, and second as the EPC (engineering, procurement and construction) contractor that will build the wind park.

The EPC contract encompasses supplying and installing the foundations, the entire electrical infrastructure, including the offshore and onshore high voltage stations, the cables, and the installation of the Siemens wind turbines. Van Oord will be deploying several vessels, including the specially developed offshore installation vessel Aeolus and the cable-laying vessel Nexus, for the construction of the wind park.

Pieter van Oord, CEO, commented: “The Nexus is tangible proof of the strength of the Dutch maritime cluster. The ship was built on the order of a Dutch ship owner, at a shipyard owned by a Dutch company, to be used to build the largest Dutch offshore wind park that will contribute significantly to the implementation of the Dutch Energy Agreement.”

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