Global offshore wind leader Ørsted today signed a contract with Taiwanese supplier CWP, a subsidiary of Taiwanese listed company Century Iron & Steel Industrial, at Changhua County Government. It strongly demonstrates Ørsted’s commitment to build and develop the local offshore wind industry.
The contract between Ørsted and CWP is the first manufacturing contract signed in Taiwan since the government dedicated efforts in in developing the local supply chain for offshore wind. Ørsted’s investment amount per project in Changhua will be around NT$90 to 110bn and the total business value for four Greater Changhua projects’ underwater foundation fabrication will around NT$55 to 60bn, which local manufacturers will be the preferred suppliers.
Matthias Bausenwein, Ørsted’s General Manager for Asia Pacific and Chairman for Taiwan, said “we are committed to working with local companies since we entered the Taiwanese market almost two years ago. To secure local manufacturing capacity of our underwater foundation substructure, our engineers from Europe in the past years has collaborated closely with CWP and shared our standards and knowledge.”
Matthias Bausenwein added, “we are pleased to see CWP has elevated its professional and technical standards and committed to invest in the Taipei Harbour facility. CWP remains one of our preferred jacket foundation suppliers for Greater Changhua projects.”
CWP Chairman Lai Wen Hsiang said, “Century Steel has begun the development of the offshore wind power industry since 2013. With 30 years of experience in steel construction, Century has set off from the traditional steel structure industry to the offshore wind power foundation supplier. In 2016, the subsidiary “Century Wind Power Co., Ltd.” was established. In response to international trends, Century Steel and Century Wind Power have practically emphasized the importance of welding quality by strengthening the quality management capability, standardization, and internationalization, to show self-disciplined and the commitment to the customers. Century is the first steel structure company to acquire ISO 3834 certification in Taiwan. And currently CWP is proactively establishing a joint venture company with the Danish company BLADT, which the joint venture will be the subsidiary of CWP, in order to introduce the European fabrication technology, to enable Century Steel and Century Wind Power to become the qualified suppliers for offshore wind power underwater foundation, to launch the offshore wind power industry, to apply for EU standards, to export to every country in Europe, and to promote the corresponding supply chain, so that the quality from Taiwan is able to be worldwide. CWP plans to build a new plant in Port of Taipei, which will be on the 16-hectare land for the foundation fabrication. In addition, there will be another 16 hectares of storage area to store the jacket foundation. The plant will be completed by the end of 2019 for trial run, and the estimated total investment amount will reach NT$5 billion and create 300 to 500 employment opportunities.”
The contract was signed with an aim to prepare CWP to the coming Greater Changhua project tender. As a first step, CWP will do project management, procurement, fabrication and storage of a Mock-up of a Jacket Foundation Transition Piece for Ørsted with a contract value is around NT$ 90M and the mock-up will be delivered later in 2018.
This process will enable CWP to be much more mature and ready in time for full scale fabrication of jacket foundations for the Taiwanese offshore wind market having eg. documentation and subcontractors ready in advance and having identified potential challenges and obstacles in time.
The Greater Changhua projects, located 35 to 60 kilometres off the coast, have a maximum capacity of 2.4GW to be built out from 2021 to 2025 and power 2.8M Taiwanese homes.
Global offshore wind leader Ørsted has over 25 years of development experience and installed more than 1,000 wind turbines offshore worldwide. Ørsted is the largest developer and operator of offshore wind farms, with more than 8GW in operation and under construction.
