By Isabella Kaminski

Bladt Industries and EEW Special Pipe Construction, a consortium with experience of making foundations for offshore wind farms, has won the contract to work on the 576 MW Gwynt y Môr offshore wind farm off the North Wales coast.

According to RWE npower renewables, this latest contract means offshore construction on Gwynt y Môr could begin by the end of 2011. Foundation installation work is expected to be completed by late 2013.

Gwynt y Môr, which will be one of the world’s largest offshore wind projects in development, is being built by RWE npower renewables, a UK subsidiary of RWE Innogy. The project is a shared investment between RWE Innogy, Stadtwerke München and Siemens.

Peter Rindebæk, Managing Director of Bladt, says: "We are proud to be awarded this significant foundation contract by RWE. It is a recognition of the effective production setup combined with highly skilled project management that Bladt/EEW provides to the offshore wind industry."

RWE npower renewables is currently finalising the establishment of construction port facilities close to the site of the wind farm. Final preparations will be made to the foundations at the port before they are installed. The port will also be the base for the installation vessels, engineers and technicians.

The offshore wind farm is being constructed 13 km off the North Wales coast, in water depths of 12-28 m, and was granted approval by the UK's Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) in December 2008.

Construction of the €2 billion Gwynt y Môr project began in November 2009 when work to prepare land at St Asaph for the construction of a new 132/400 kV substation was carried out.