The first jacket foundations have arrived in Cuxhaven (a town on Germany’s North Sea coast) for Orsted’s www.orsted.co.uk 450MW Borkum Riffgrund 2 wind farm in the German North Sea.

The Polish shipyard ST3 Offshore is fabricating 20 jackets for the project, with Harland and Wolff manufacturing the ‘suction buckets’ for the foundations.

The structures will be assembled at Cuxhaven ahead of installation (in the spring) by GeoSea vessel Innovation, 38km off the German island of Borkum.

Cuxport, the operator of Cuxhaven, has brought in an LR 11350 crawler crane to lift the jackets from the transport barges and place them on the suction buckets.

Once the 950-tonne 50m-high structures have been assembled they will be moved to a storage area until installation.

Borkum Riffgrund 2 is scheduled to be fully commissioned in 2019. It will feature 56 MHI Vestas 8MW wind turbines — 36 on monopiles and 20 on suction bucket jacket foundations.