Siemens' offshore blade plant in UK to be built in Alexandra Dock

Nov 17, 2014 - Germany’s Siemens AG (ETR:SIE) said Friday it will locate its planned offshore wind turbine blade factory in England at Alexandra Dock, instead of Paull, so as to be more efficient.

As previously announced, Alexandra Dock in Hull will house wind turbine assembly and service facilities. However, in the initial plan there was not enough space there for the blade plant, so Siemens was to build it nearby Paull. Now the company has redesigned the blade factory so as to require less space, whilst producing more.

Siemens calculates that at Alexandra Dock it will be producing 600 blade per year, which compares to 450 in its earlier proposal.

“By deploying the latest manufacturing technologies and adopting LEAN principles from the outset we have been able to design our new blade plant to have 20% higher output in a plant which is 15% smaller than the original design,” said project director Finbarr Dowling.

This will be the first plant for Siemens’ next generation blade technology IntegralBlade, used in the 6-MW Siemens SWT-6.0-154 turbine, the German company noted. Work has already commenced on Alexandra Dock to prepare the area for construction of the new Siemens facilities.

As announced this spring, Siemens and Associated British Ports (ABP) will jointly invest GBP 310 million (USD 484.4m/EUR 387.8m) into the rotor blade factory and the facility for wind turbine equipment assembly. ABP Director Humber, John Fitzgerald pointed out that “together with our land at Paull, ABP has plenty of capacity to accommodate further participants in the supply chain for offshore wind manufacturing.”

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