DEME and Gould complete preps for subsea drill load-out in France

Gould Heavy Lift Services and DEME Offshore have performed the load-in, assembly, and preparations for the load out of the new offshore drill equipment for the Saint-Nazaire offshore wind project.

For DEME, the Dutch company provided the engineering, project management, rigging and turnkey execution of a number of load transfers.

The tailormade subsea drill will be used to install the XL-monopile foundations at the French offshore wind project from DEME’s jack-up Innovation.

At the beginning of 2020, DEME signed an agreement with Herrenknecht for the fabrication of the drill. It was commissioned in October last year after passing Factory Acceptance Tests.

Saint-Nazaire will comprise 80 GE Haliade 150-6MW turbines located between 12 and 20 km off the coast of the Guérande peninsula. The plan is to have the 480 MW project operational in the summer of 2022.