As a proud founding member of the Scottish Offshore Wind Ports Alliance (SOWPA), Montrose Port is excited to celebrate the official launch of this collaborative forum. SOWPA is a progressive and collaborative forum of the country’s leading infrastructure facilities, targeted at optimising the opportunities from offshore wind.

The alliance was launched at the All-Energy Exhibition and Conference in Glasgow, which Montrose Port attended.

SOWPA is represented by leading offshore energy ports across Scotland, which hold expertise across the full offshore wind value chain, from Manufacturing and Fabrication, through to Marshalling, Assembly, and Operations & Maintenance. 

The alliance is actively developing opportunities to enhance regional competitiveness, drive efficiencies and fast-track the required expertise to support the UK’s burgeoning offshore wind industry. 

This will be achieved by optimising large-scale operations and addressing common & complex industry challenges through knowledge sharing and collaboration. Collectively, this will improve regional competitiveness and enhance the value proposition in support of ScotWind, INTOG and all future offshore wind leasing rounds in the UK. 

Iain Sinclair, Executive Director at Global Energy Group, said: 

“It is widely recognised that ports have a critical enabling role in the industrialisation and deployment of offshore wind in the UK. Today’s announcement demonstrates that ports are motivated to take the initiative, work proactively and diligently together, and align with the whole offshore wind ecosystem, to maximise the localisation of the supply chain requirements.

“SOWPA’s collective capability, knowledge and expertise is a world leading value proposition. We have a willingness and appetite to enhance our competitiveness, address supply chain challenges and deliver against Scotland and the UK’s offshore wind ambitions.”

SOWPA are working together to support the delivery of recommendations in recent industry reports from Offshore Wind Industry Council, the Offshore Wind Growth Partnership, as well as the Industrial Growth Partnership (IGP), all pointing to the pivotal role that ports infrastructure has in the success of Scotland and the UK in delivering our offshore wind ambitions and industrial growth. 

These plans highlight the need to develop our supply chain, including ports, as a system and support their critical role as enabling infrastructure. Our ports present early investment and industrial growth opportunities to service the burgeoning offshore sectors of Scotland, the UK and around the globe. 

Iain Sinclair adds:

“The ports recognise the scale of the potential opportunity on the horizon and are making significant investments aimed at delivering optimised port infrastructure solutions for offshore wind. We can and want to do more, and this is best achieved by aligning the required enabling infrastructure, with industry needs.

“The crucial role of Scotland’s Green Freeports also cannot be understated. They will be essential in attracting inward investment and paving the way for new supply chain opportunities, which will have a catalytic effect on the pace of deployment. However, the enormity of the market opportunity and challenges that come with it, will require ALL of Scotland’s capable ports and their available capacities, to be engaged in the infrastructure plans.”

Minister for Climate Action, Gillian Martin said:

“Scotland’s ports are crucial in helping unlock our huge offshore wind potential, and private investment – stimulated by up to £500 million of Scottish Government backing over the next five years – will be critical to the continued growth of the sector.

“Partners across the sector and wider supply chain have already shown a strong appetite to take a strategic and collaborative approach to delivering investment in ports, manufacturing and fabrication, and the establishment of the Offshore Wind Ports Alliance will ensure that, collectively, our world-leading infrastructure facilities are optimised to deliver our offshore renewables revolution.”

With ambitions to develop 30GW of offshore wind capacity over the next 10 years through the ScotWind leasing round, the future project pipeline will put substantial pressure on Scottish port capacity due to the significant infrastructure requirements needed to support its efficient deployment, in addition to the ambition to establish new critical manufacturing activities.

Recognising this challenge and their role as critical enablers for wider supply chain development, SOWPA’s launch, provides a clear signal to industry on their members willingness to work together with the collective ambition to accelerate the deployment of offshore wind and support the national energy transition.

The new SOWPA website features up to date technical data on the port facilities, including an overview of both the existing and planned infrastructure developments. This will provide project developers and potential inward investors with essential information on the current and future landscape of Scotland’s offshore wind port capacity and capabilities.