Bourbon Scoops EPCI Award For Eolmed Offshore Wind Farm

Maritime and windfarm installation company Bourbon Subsea Services was awarded an EPCI contract for one of the first floating wind pilot farms in the French Mediterranean Sea by Eolmed.

Eolmed is a consortium led by the French renewable energy developer Qair and includes Total, BW Ideol and its Damping Pool concrete floater, and the wind turbine manufacturer MHI Vestas.

The project includes and construction of a 30MW Mediterranean offshore wind farm with 3 wind turbines some 10 miles off the coastal town of Gruissan. According to Bourbon, the wind turbines will be installed by mid-2024. The final investment decision was announced in May 2022.

Bourbon’s scope of work will consist of the complete farm offshore installation and includes the detailed design, procurement, and fabrication of the floating electrical hub, the inter-array cables, the anchoring, and the mooring systems.

Since 2011, Bourbon has installed most of the floating wind turbine prototypes around the world. The story continued with the first European pre-industrial floating wind farm – the Windfloat Atlantic – completed in 2020 offshore Portugal, becoming one of the global leaders in floating offshore wind farm installation.

The company added that it would rely on its teams based in Marseilles, composed of highly qualified experts who have capitalized on all the projects already completed.

Bourbon will also call on a solid network of local partners, which has been built up over more than 10 years, thus strengthening the expertise and industrial capacities of the Occitanie and PACA regions in the field of offshore wind energy.

“We are very happy about this partnership with Eolmed. Thanks to the effort of the team and the trust of the EolMed partners, we are on the path to initiating a great milestone for the development of floating wind in Europe. This award also demonstrates our capabilities to undertake wide EPCI offshore projects.” said Patrick Belenfant, CEO of Bourbon Subsea Services.

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