Sif will supply the two offshore wind projects Baltyk II and III with monopiles. Equinor and Polenergia have signed a contract with the Dutch manufacturer to supply 100 foundations for the Polish farms, whose 1.44GW is scheduled to be operational by 2028.

”I am delighted that we have now finalized the contracts for our first projects in the Baltic seas, offshore Poland,” Sif chief executive Fred van Beers says in a statement.

”These are the first projects under the framework agreement we concluded with Equinor in support of the expansion of our manufacturing facilities in Rotterdam. We look forward to cooperate with Equinor and Polenergia and to make these projects a success as ones of the first projects in our new manufacturing set-up.”

Production of the monopiles is set to start in the second half of 2025 with completion in Q1 of the following year. The expansion of the Maasvlakte facility in Rotterdam began last year and is expected to be completed in July, more than doubling production capacity to 500 kilotons per year.

The decision to expand the facility was made in no small part due to Equinor. With EUR 100m in prepayments and a capital injection, the oil company secured almost a third of the EUR 328m that last February was set aside for investment in Maasvlakte 2.

Initially, it was not projects in Poland that were supposed to be built for Equinor, but rather in New York. However, after Equinor dropped the contract with the state authorities for Empire Wind 2, the suppliers for that project - including Sif - also received a notice of termination shortly after the New Year.

Sif subsequently informed that the contract for Empire Wind 1 - which is currently being rebid in New York - was still in force. And that Equinor would try to find ways to utilize the production gap left by Empire Wind 2. Like Baltyk II and III, the monopiles for the canceled New York project were scheduled for production in 2025-26.

However, the capacity to produce monopiles for the Baltyk projects has been reserved since last April. A spokesperson from Sif tells EnergyWatch that discussions are still ongoing about the consequences of the contract cancellation, and that these ”include options for rescheduling the Baltyk schedule,” but that nothing has yet been decided.

Translated using DeepL with additional editing by Kristoffer Grønbæk