Business and Energy Secretary to see First Blade from New World-class Siemens Factory
Thursday 1 December 2016
The Rt Hon Greg Clark MP will visit the factory – the centerpiece of a £310m investment – as the first 75m blade is unveiled to Siemens customers, guests and the media.
The blade is the first of hundreds to be manufactured in Hull every year for Siemens’ industry-leading 7MW and next-generation 8MW turbines and will be among the first supplied to DONG Energy for the Race Bank wind farm off the Norfolk and Lincolnshire coast.
The milestone comes less than two years after a ground-breaking ceremony to mark the start of construction on a huge site the size of 78 football pitches at Hull’s Alexandra Dock. Since then, global offshore wind market leader Siemens and partner Associated British Ports (ABP) have transformed the under-utilised waterfront location into a world-scale hub for wind power manufacturing, logistics and assembly.
The development is one of Siemens’ largest-ever investments worldwide in manufacturing facilities. The factory has been delivered ahead of programme and within budget, with the new Hull workforce demonstrating rapidly their capability in world-class manufacturing and engineering.
As well as being given a tour of the new factory, guests will see 90-metre turbine towers which have been assembled at the dockside, ready for load out with other components early in January to the Dudgeon offshore wind farm off the Norfolk coast – the first project to be serviced by the new facilities in Hull. Dudgeon is joint venture owned by Statoil, Statkraft and Masdar.
Mr Clark said: “This is exactly the relationship we want to see between our large infrastructure projects in the UK and our supply chain companies as part of our industrial strategy.