This spring the activity in the vessel market has picked up and come this summer activity will flourish. Following several contract announcements, vessels mobilizing for projects, and new builds delivered and ready to work, this summer will be special. The number of newbuilds delivered has not been seen in over 10 years, bringing forward new capacity to the market.

Voltaire, Jan De Nul’s Jack up, is just finishing its long journey from the Middle East to Europe and will soon be ready to take on the Dogger Bank project, installing General Electric’s Haliade-X 13 turbine. Voltaire is built for tomorrow’s offshore wind market as the expectations of unprecedented turbine sizes in the coming years have been a key driver for vessel development.

Several vessel companies have picked an “off the shelf” vessel design from GustoMSC with the popular NG-14000, NG-16000 and NG-20000 jack up design series. However, Jan De Nul chose to go in a different direction with an in-house design. The vessel is very well equipped with a large deck space, 3200-ton leg encircled Huisman crane and durable jacking system from BLM.

Voltaire is the second newbuild delivery for Jan De Nul this year, as the heavy lift Les Alizés was delivered around the same time but arrived in Europe a couple of months prior to Voltaire. In addition to the new builds from Jan De Nul, Shimizu’s Blue Wind is fully operational and working on the Toyama Nyuzen project in Japan, Penta Ocean’s CP-16001 is undergoing sea trials, and Seaway 7’s jack up vessel Seaway Ventus is expected to be delivered this summer. Moreover, CDWE’s heavy lift vessel Green Jade is also expected to be delivered in the coming months.

Image credit: Jan De Nul