Jan De Nul has launched its newest cable-laying vessel: the Fleeming Jenkin. The company will use it to install subsea cables for the transmission of renewable energy. The vessel has a loading capacity of 28 000 t, making it the world’s largest of its kind. Delivery is scheduled for 2H26.
The launch took place by flooding the dry dock at the CMHI Haimen shipyard in China. The final vessel construction phase now begins, including sea trials.
Wouter Vermeersch, Director Subsea Cables Offshore Energy at Jan De Nul, said: “The Fleeming Jenkin combines all the cable installation expertise we have built up over the past 15 years. The entire vessel and the technologies on board were designed by our in-house specialists. The result is a vessel that operates very efficiently, reducing both the cost price and the ecological footprint of our projects.”
Once operational, the Fleeming Jenkin will immediately start her first assignment: the 2 GW programme by TenneT, the grid operator for the Netherlands and large parts of Germany. This 2 GW programme introduces a new generation of offshore grid connection systems that can each transmit up to 2 GW. For comparison, an average nuclear power plant typically generates between 1 – 1.6 GW. Fleeming Jenkin will install export cables on four of these 2 GW connections, bundling and laying four cables together. This results in a total of more than 2800 km of cable being installed over a distance of more than 700 km.
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