The gateway to Denmark

Carsten Aa, chief executive officer of LINDØ port of ODENSE in Denmark, talks to PES about his vision for the site, and its expansion into a specialist cluster supporting the offshore wind industry.

Carsten Aa

PES: Welcome to PES Wind magazine, it’s great to talk with you. We would like you to begin by explaining a little about the background of LINDØ port of ODENSE and the importance of the offshore wind industry to you?

Carsten Aa: The port is owned by the local municipality. At the beginning of 2014 we bought the former shipyard, which had been owned by A.P. Moller-Maersk Group, and began to transform it from a shipyard into a port area specialising in heavy load, and in particular supporting the area’s offshore wind cluster.

We merged the two former companies, the old port and shipyard, into one new company, which we called LINDØ port of ODENSE (LPO). The port specialises in supporting the wind industry, and has nearly 200,000 square metres of production halls and storage buildings, and some of the largest cranes in Europe.

We have now re-built and renewed most of the area, and are close to completing its transformation into the most modern port area in Europe for the wind industry. We are involved both in the production of nacelles, through one of our companies MHI Vestas,

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as well as being the only port in Europe that has produced over 100 jackets for the offshore wind industry.

PES: Is the offshore wind market growing?

CA: Yes, it is. Although 2018 has been a quieter year for us than 2017, in terms of orders, we expect business to grow again in 2019 and in the upcoming years. As a result, we are heavily investing in the new port area to support the growing industry.

PES: LINDØ port of ODENSE itself is expanding, could you explain your plans for the growth of the port?

CA: We are investing 400 million Danish kroner in developing specialised port areas. We see this investment as necessary to meet customer demand, particularly for some of these huge offshore projects.

We are seeing a lot of specialised demand,

and so to support the industry we have created heavy load areas not seen at a port anywhere else in Europe, and a 1,200-tonne gantry crane.

We are trying to focus our investment to meet not only the demand we are seeing now, but also future demand, a great part of which we believe will be in offshore wind.

PES: Is this expansion being driven by changes in the offshore wind market, and if so, how are you adapting to those changes?

CA: We are seeing a change towards more large-scale agreements. The industry is not working so much on a project to project basis now, it is investing heavily in longer-term agreements.

We are also seeing a lot more standardisation, with a heavy focus on quality and safety.

We are supporting the industry with specialist engineering facilities, crane operation and heavy transport in our port areas. So we’re changing from a traditional port to a more specialised port, able to offer a full service.

PES: How are the needs of your customers changing?

CA: The changes in the market are all customer-driven. It is no longer driven by consultants, it is now much more driven by the customer directly. That has been quite a change over the last few years.

PES: How will the expansion of the port enable you to better meet their needs?

CA: We are seeing a demand for heavy load facilities, so a great part of our expansion will be to support the production halls we have here, with heavy logistics facilities.

PES: How is the design and size of offshore wind components changing, and what challenges does this present to the port?

CA: The biggest change is in terms of the larger scale of wind turbines and their components now. The largest wind turbine from MHI Vestas has grown from 8MW to nearly 10MW now, and about 400 tonnes in weight.

So it’s the scale that is changing, in both size and weight. In a few years the wings will be surpassing 100 metres in length, and the industry is talking about turbines of 12-20MW.

Of course we have the facilities needed to meet this scale of production, but it will be a major challenge for some ports to cope with this change in size. We have some of the largest production facilities in Denmark, and we have heavier cranes, but it will be a challenge for a lot of the smaller ports around Europe.

PES: Lindø is Denmark’s largest industrial cluster. What benefits does this offer to your customers?

CA: It means we have specialised companies covering virtually the entire sector, on-site. So when we have these large players from the industry, a lot of the support they need is already available inside the port area. So they don’t have to wait for specialised port services to arrive from another part of Denmark, they can have it within five to ten minutes, from inside the port area itself.

As a general rule the more specialised these clusters are, the stronger they are, and the companies support each other, and trade with each other. We are seeing a lot of companies wanting to rent facilities just to be a part of the cluster. Once the wheels start turning, they tend to speed up by themselves, if you have a strong cluster.

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PES: How do you ensure you constantly keep up with international safety standards?

CA: Education, especially on our engineering side, but also for example for our crane operators and other staff. Our focus is always on ensuring we can meet all of the international safety demands.

PES: Where do you operate and where are your key markets, and are there any areas, geographically speaking, that you would like to break into?

CA: Geographically we are in a position to serve Denmark and the Baltic area. Of course, we would like to support the entire North Sea region, but geographically we are challenged when it comes to acting as installation port for the North Sea projects. But as production site we are servicing the whole region.

PES: What is the biggest challenge facing the industry today?

CA: The biggest challenge is a political one. As I see it governments of nearly all of the countries that depend on energy from wind have to start thinking about the long-term security of the industry. They have to ensure that there is a market in five to ten years’ time, because then wind turbine manufacturers can invest, and when they invest then we can invest, and it creates a circle.

Conversely, when companies are not confident in what politicians will want in two to five years’ time, then they can’t invest in new technology.

Investment in the industry is mostly driven by the political climate. So my wish would be that politicians started to think and plan for the longer-term.

PES: What has 2018 been like so far for LINDØ port of ODENSE, and as we move to the end of the year, how do you see the future in the offshore industry?

CA: We had a really busy year in 2017, but in 2018 we have seen a bit of a slow-down, so hopefully we’ll see new projects starting up in 2019.

However, we haven’t just been sitting around waiting for the industry to pick up, we have been trying to use the time as best we can. So we have been upgrading our equipment, and speeding up the port expansion. We have been trying to invest in new equipment, to make sure that we can meet the industry’s needs in 2019. So, 2018 has been a little bit of a quiet year, but I have expectations that 2019 will see the same growth we saw in 2017.

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‘So we have been upgrading our equipment, and speeding up the port expansion. We have been trying to invest in new equipment, to make sure that we can meet the industry’s needs in 2019.’

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