Coinciding with its 110th anniversary, the German cable making company Norddeutsche Seekabelwerke GmbH (NSW), a General Cable subsidiary, has just inaugurated a new submarine cable production plant in the town of Nordenham. The inaugural event was presided over by Christian Wulff, prime minister of the Lander Lower Saxony, who was accompanied by Jack Welsh, president of the supervisory board of General Cable Corporation, Greg Kenny, president of the board of directors of General Cable Corporation, and Domingo Goenaga, chairman of General Cable Europe and North Africa.
Valentin Jug, chairman of NSW, said: "This is where we are going to manufacture the submarine energy cables of the greatest length, diameter and weight." He added that the company is progressing toward new business opportunities, since it also has the capacity to manufacture high voltage cables intended to link the marine wind farms with the receiving substations on land.
General Cable's German subsidiary can also manufacture submarine cables for the extraction operations of the oil and gas industries. Mr Jug said: "We are likewise expanding our business to the sphere of island links, as we are currently installing the first submarine electric link to the island of Helgoland for the company E.ON Hanse AG."
7,000 square metres
The new cable manufacturing plant is situated next to the mouth of the River Weser and represents an investment of over €40 million by General Cable, which acquired NSW in 2007. The recently inaugurated factory has a surface area of 7,000m², with a length of 150m and a height of 15m. Rudolf Stahl, general manager responsible for sales, marketing and project implementation of NSW, said: "The machines installed are among the biggest in the world in their speciality." A large space has been fitted out next to the plant for the storage of cables, with a capacity for several thousand tons. Rudolf Stahl said: "With the new jobs created, total employees already amount to 550 in this plant, which is the only submarine cables plant in Germany."
NSW has already obtained orders from the first two German marine wind farms, situated in the North Sea. Within the Alpha Ventus pilot project, which is being developed 45km from the coast of Borkum, 12 wind farms with a capacity of 5MW each are being built, in which NSW will supply and install the cables. It will also manufacture them for the BARD 1 wind farm.
Moreover, this summer a further 80 wind turbines are going to be installed to the north-west of the island of Borkum and NSW has also obtained the first cable order in the Baltic Sea, specifically for the company E.ON Sverige AB, which will allocate them to the Rodsand II marine wind farm, generating a power of 200MW and supplying electricity to some 200,000 homes.
To undertake these big projects with guarantees, NSW has reached collaboration agreements with its partner Hans Schramm & Sohn GmbH & Co. KG and with the engineering company Tiefbau-GmbH Unterweser (TAGU), a company from the Ludwig Freytag Group, which built NSW's recently launched boat (Nostag 10) to help with the laying of the cables.
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