PRESS RELEASE – AAL Shipping has delivered a 23-metre diameter cable carousel to Jan De Nul for the Formosa 2 offshore wind farm project, 9.5 kilometres off the coast of north-west Taiwan.

The cargo was loaded in Jebel Ali and transported on deck of the 19,000 dwt heavy-lift vessel AAL Nanjing to the project marshalling port Taichung in Taiwan.

The cable carousel is one of the first major components to be delivered to Taichung Port where works have begun to develop the project’s operations and maintenance base.

The Formosa 2 project started construction at the end of 2019 and the project will be in operation in 2021. The offshore wind farm is expected to produce enough green energy to power 380,000 households a year.

“Manufactured in Norway’s Drammen Yard and designed to spool 3,000 tonnes of undersea power cable, the carousel alone weighed over 370 tonnes”, says Yahaya Sanusi, deputy head of AAL Transport Engineering.

“The unit was loaded and discharged using both of the Nanjing’s port-mounted heavy-lift cranes and rigged in three points to a 22.5-metre lifting beam, which proved to be the safest solution for the lift. Its significant diameter of just over 23 metres was slightly less than the 23.4-metre beam of the S-Class vessel but wider than her 18.8-metre hatch cover, so it ended up protruding over both sides of the ship”, Sanusi adds.

The AAL Nanjing is one of four S-Class vessels in the AAL fleet. It has a combined lift capacity of 700 tonnes.