Swedish power company Vattenfall has laid out plans to build its largest warehouse in Northern Europe with critical main components and spare parts for wind turbines.

The warehouse will be located at the Danish Port of Esbjerg and serve wind farms in Great Britain, Scandinavia and Northern Europe when ready in 2022.

Vattenfall aims to establish a 2,100 sqm indoor warehouse and an 8,200 sqm outdoor storage facility.

“It is from this central warehouse facility in Esbjerg that the major part of Vattenfall’s wind farms in Northern Europe will be supplied with spare parts,” Pia Bonding, Head of Integrated Operations at Vattenfall explains.

”The Port of Esbjerg is the ideal place for us to build such a warehouse due to its central location in Northern Europe and the professional way the port is operated. It will provide economies of scale compared to having vital main components stored at several smaller locations, and it is a central part of our ambition to see growth in wind farms across Northern Europe,” says Pia Bonding.

Vattenfall is operating more than 1,300 on- and offshore wind turbines in Northern Europe dispersed across farms from Northern Sweden over Denmark to Germany and the Netherlands.

Already today, the farms are monitored from Vattenfall’s central control room in Esbjerg and in future the town will also be the hub for a central warehouse for these wind farms.

The CEO of the Port of Esbjerg, Dennis Jul Pedersen, welcomes the new warehouse. He is in particular satisfied as he sees it as a confirmation that the strategy to lay out 150,000 sqm in the old ferry terminal to this type of projects is right.

“It was a condition for Vattenfall that the building was close to the quay. It is part of the port’s strategy to be able to deliver this type of solutions, and the former ferry terminal has been laid out for this type of activity,” Dennis Jul Pedersen says.

The purpose of the central warehouse is to stock critical main components such as gearboxes, generators, transformers, shafts and blades as well as the main components necessary for bringing the electricity on shore such as array cables and switchgear. The warehouse will be a supplement to the dedicated warehouses that will still serve the individual wind farms.

The company Thyborøn Invest will be constructing the building. They already have experience with similar buildings in connection with the Kriegers Flak wind farm, and will own the building that will then be let out to Vattenfall.

“The Port of Esbjerg is a magnet for the wind industry, and we believe that it will be a good and long-term investment to locate here. Large facilities will be in demand for many years to come,” says Anton Bro, Managing Director of Thyborøn Invest.

The mayor of Esbjerg, Jesper Frost Rasmussen, sees the building works as a result of the good work on and around the Port of Esbjerg.

”I am happy to see this important and strategic decision from Vattenfall. We believe that it is yet another result of Esbjerg having created a hub for wind in Europe that both national and international companies have discovered,” he says.

The construction work will begin at the end of June this year, and is expected to be completed some ten months later. After that, the warehouse will be stocked and made ready for operation in June 2022.