Sarens, a world leader in heavy lifting, engineered transport, and crane rental services, has played a key role in the development of the Culzean floating wind project, with the assembly and load-out of a floating wind turbine foundation having been carried out in Gulen, Norway.
For this project, Sarens’ engineering team, acting on behalf of Wergeland Base and Archer Wind, has been responsible for a wide range of tasks, from the early engineering phase to determining lifting points, defining lifting methods, and providing all the necessary rigging – including the SarSpin device to ensure the perfect levelling of all components.
This hybrid project, led by TotalEnergies and currently being developed by NEO NEXT, is located in the British sector of the North Sea, approximately 220 km east of Aberdeen in Scotland, and its main objective will be to help decarbonise gas production at the Culzean offshore platform. To this end, it will feature a single Vestas V112 floating wind turbine with a power generation capacity of 3 MW, which will enable it to meet approximately 20% of the platform’s total energy demand.
Sarens has been appointed to lead the heavy-lifting operations thanks to its ability to offer one of the best available single-crane solutions on the market, the LR12500 1.0 model (also known as the Strong Steve), which was already at Wergeland Base having recently completed a decommissioning project there. This has enabled Sarens to drastically reduce its logistical footprint (as there was no need to deploy dozens of lorries to transport the crane to the project site), significantly improve cost efficiency, and make the necessary machinery available to its client immediately for the project’s implementation.
For this project, Sarens has taken responsibility for early-stage engineering consultation, complete lifting method statements, rigging design and equipment supply, and on-site execution by a highly experienced team. The key components lifted included the structure’s outer columns, weighing around 150 t; the central columns, weighing 160 t; and the frames, weighing 90 t.
Willem Ditmer, Sarens Senior Project Manager, Sarens, commented: “The heavy-lifting tasks we have carried out for this project have required high-precision slewing and crawling. By enabling the safe assembly and load-out of this floating wind turbine foundation, Sarens has directly contributed to providing the Culzean gas extraction plant with a clean and renewable energy source. We would like to thank Wergeland Base and Archer Wind for their collaboration, which has ensured that all the work carried out at Wergeland Base has been completed safely, efficiently, and in strict accordance with the established schedule.”
The Culzean gas production plant is considered to be of strategic importance to the British energy sector. Commissioned in June 2019, this plant is designed to produce 15 million m3/d of natural gas and condensate, which covers approximately 5% of Great Britain’s gas supply needs. Until the new wind turbine comes online, scheduled for 4Q26, the energy required to operate the plant is obtained by flaring some of the extracted gas in on-site turbines, which results in a significant environmental footprint.
Sarens has a strong international track record in the offshore wind sector, having successfully carried out port logistics, assembly, and loading of critical components at pioneering wind farms such as Provence Grand Large (France’s first floating pilot project), Fécamp, Saint-Nazaire and Saint-Brieuc, as well as the management and specialised maintenance of floating wind turbines at Hywind Scotland, thereby consolidating its technical capability to safely handle megastructures and foundations weighing up to 5000 tonnes in the world’s most demanding port environments.
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