Produced in Gijón, Spain, the ArcelorMittal naval heavy plates in grades NV36D and NV36E will be used to construct the windfarm’s five floating structures, which will be located at Buchan Deep – some 25 km east of Peterhead. Joint venture Navantia-Windar selected ArcelorMittal as its steel supplier for the project because the company offered several key customer benefits. The contract was awarded by Statoil subsidiary Hywind Scotland Ltd.

Luis Rodríguez Hevia, of ArcelorMittal Asturias’ commercial department, said: “Several factors made ArcelorMittal the ideal supplier for this project: our proximity to the customer’s premises, our short delivery times, the quality of our steels, and our ability to react quickly to the unforeseen challenges that are possible with a project of this size and scale”.

Weighing 3 500 t, and measuring 14.4m at their widest point, the windfarm structures are large steel cylinders that extend some 100m beneath the sea surface – each attached to the seabed in a mooring system.

Composed of a series of ring sections with internal reinforcements, each structure comprises two watertight compartments. The lower compartment was designed to provide floating stability in severe weather conditions, holding a ballast of water and rocks. 

Delivery of the heavy plate by ArcelorMittal’s Gijón site began in December 2015 and will be completed in May 2016. Construction of the windfarm began in January this year and will require around 450 000 hours of work.

ArcelorMittal, Luxembourg