Gou Dian Tou 001 was better know as “Friedrich Ernestine” when owned by RWE and as “M/V Torben” when chartered by ZPMC Profundo. Now under Ziton the new name of the vessel will be Wind Energy. It was not by chance that Ziton has chosen this vessel as it already operates its sister ship Wind Enterprise. Both Wind Enterprise and Wind Energy are of the Seabreeze Class delivered to RWE in 2011.  Wind Enterprise stayed in Europe, while Wind Energy was utilized first in Taiwan for Formosa 1 Phase 1, before ending up in China where the vessel has been used on several projects. Now the vessel will once again be in the same fleet with its sister ship working maintenance on European projects it once installed foundations and turbines on.

The demand for offshore wind maintenance is growing rapidly and the need for vessel in this segment is high. Ziton is unique in that it has a robust jack up fleet fully committed for offshore wind maintenance and repair and is now expanding its fleet with one more jack up. There has been little acknowledgement towards the need for offshore wind maintenance vessels as its often overshadowed by the market’s concern around a lack of foundation and turbine installation vessels. The extensive new project pipeline is likely to give minimal availability for installation vessels to work maintenance. As a result there will be fewer vessels capable to do maintenance and repair on the larger turbines with a size of 8MW and up.

Image credit: Ziton