Louis Dreyfus Armateurs Secures Contract for Offshore Wind Service Operation Vessels

Louis Dreyfus Armateurs (LDA) has recently announced that they have secured a contract for up to three service operation vessels that will be deployed on offshore wind sites in the German North Sea. This contract comes as a result of winning an SOV tender issued by Vattenfall, Sweden’s largest utility, for the wind farms DanTysk and Sandbank, as well as the Nordlicht wind farm zone, with an option for a third vessel.

Vattenfall received a total of six bids or requests to participate in the tender, which amounted to €563m ($575m) in total. The operational wind farms DanTysk and Sandbank, each with a capacity of 288 MW, share an offshore accommodation platform and benefit from synergies with the Horns Rev wind farm, utilizing the same vessels, infrastructure, and facilities managed from the service port in Esbjerg.

The Nordlicht wind farm zone, located 85 km north of the island of Borkum, consists of two separate sites – Nordlicht I and Nordlicht II, with expected capacities of 980MW and 630MW respectively. These wind farms are expected to be connected to the German electricity grid by 2027 and 2028.

LDA currently operates two SOVs, the 2019-built Wind of Change and the 2021-built Wind of Hope, which are used for the maintenance of offshore wind farms in Germany and the UK. Additionally, they have a SOV walk-to-work vessel, the Wind of Pride, acquired in 2019.