The London office will also handle sales, project management, finance and administration for its offshore wind business.

The Spanish wind turbine manufacturer will furthermore open an R&D centre for offshore wind technology and build a wind turbine blade manufacturing plant, with its port logistics and operation and maintenance services based at different ports in the UK.

Gamesa says its investment could lead to 1000 new direct jobs with another 800 indirect jobs at local supplier firms.

The offshore industrial plan will start implementation in 2011.

Gamesa Chairman Jorge Calvet, says: “The United Kingdom’s resolute decision to enact an ambitious offshore plan, along with the country’s support for foreign investment and the availability of large ports – which are essential in this business – convinced us to make the decision to base the global headquarters of our offshore activity in the UK.

“This will involve sizeable investments in coming years and will generate local, skilled and sustainable jobs.”

Developing offshore wind turbines

Gamesa is currently developing two families of offshore wind turbines based on its G10X 4.5 MW wind turbine system. The first two prototypes of the G11X 5 MW system will be tested in the last quarter of 2012 with pre-series models ready for market in 2013.

The other series of offshore wind turbines has a capacity of 6-7 MW with a pre-series potentially available in 2014.