Harren & Partner, the owner of SAL Heavy Lift, is jumping into the expected turbine installation vessel gap with a new company and a jack-up installation vessel. SAL Renewables will focus solely on offshore maintenance and installation of wind turbines and will be managed by Heiko Felderhoff.

The Harren & Partner Group is already heavily involved in the wind industry as a logistics provider through SAL Heavy Lift, which also has experience in offshore installation work. Using a newly designed fly-jib for its cranes, SAL’s heavy-lift vessel MV Lone just completed an offshore piling project last year. So with the expected shortage of installation vessels from 2025 and onwards, moving into the offshore turbine installation business seems like a natural progression for the company.

Also read: ‘Shortage of offshore installation vessels looms by 2025’

Wind Lift 1

SAL Renewables launches with a specialised jack-up installation vessel in its fleet, the 2010-built Wind Lift 1 with a lift capacity of 500 tonnes.

‘Wind Lift I is a highly adaptable vessel. There are only few things that it can’t do, it’s kind of like a Swiss army knife. This asset makes for a great start for our new venture with SAL Renewables,’ says Felderhoff.

SAL Renewables is not just looking at the market in terms of newly added capacity. ‘With Wind Lift I, we are not only targeting the installation and maintenance market, but also decommissioning and upgrading of old existing wind parks,’ adds Matthieu Moerman, Head of Projects at SAL Renewables.

The Wind Lift I was recently deployed by SAL for a hydraulic hammer test as part of an offshore wind project in the North Sea. Despite the season’s unpredictable weather patterns, the vessel managed the job perfectly, the company states. In addition to Wind Lift I, SAL Renewables also holds access to the offshore DP2 heavy-lift ship Blue Giant, which can lift up to 700 tonnes.

Supplement to existing business

SAL Renewables benefits from the many years of wind experience within the Harren & Partner Group and is set up to complement SAL Heavy Lift’s portfolio, which will carry out all the traditional heavy lift shipping operations as the transport and logistics arm.

‘Wind power has been a cornerstone of our business in the past few years and we continue to see significant projects here. SAL Renewables is a perfect supplement to our established logistics business, but also something new. By offering maintenance and component installation services predominantly for the wind turbines themselves, we are expanding our total service offerings to the global renewables market,’ managing director Martin Harren of Harren & Partner explains the strategy behind SAL Renewables.

This article first appeared on Project Cargo Journal, which is another publication of SWZ|Maritime’s publishing partner Promedia.