UK’s Ardersier Port, which was one of the largest oil rig fabrication yards in the world employing up to 4,500 workers, is now set to be transformed into Europe’s first fully circular energy transition facility where old oil rigs will be recycled to make foundations for floating offshore wind farms in a move expected to generate thousands of jobs.
The unused Ardersier Port located 14 miles east of Inverness stretches at over 400 acres and, with more than a kilometre of quayside, it is the largest brownfield port in the UK. It is now being transformed into an energy transition facility by its new owners as the work on a GBP 20 million (EUR 23.5 million), nine-month ‘capital dredge’ is about to begin, expected to remove 2.5 million cubic metres of sand.
The port is owned by Steve Regan, a former chief executive of civil engineering firm Careys, and business partner Tony O’Sullivan, who purchased the site earlier this year but the acquisition fee was not disclosed. They set up Ardersier Port in May and registered the business in Fraserburgh.
Over the next five years, the port’s owners will deliver an oil rig decommissioning facility and a waste from energy recovery facility. They will also deliver a GBP 300 million green steel plant, powered by offshore wind and energy from waste, a concrete production plant utilising dredged sand from the port and by-products from the steel plant and energy from waste facility, as well as a dedicated floating wind hub for concrete floating wind foundation manufacturing.
This, according to owners, will create the largest floating wind foundation fabrication, manufacturing and assembly facility in the UK – in an offshore wind market predicted to deliver 29,000 jobs and GBP 43.6 billion to the UK economy by 2050.