The Danish Shipowners’ Association has released the strategic review it commissioned from Navigant Consulting in order to gain a comprehensive insight into the global offshore wind industry. Extracts as follow:

The strategic review maps all active and prospective ships in the offshore wind industry; identifies and profiles all key players in the sector; provides detailed country- level offshore wind 10-year forecasts for all existing and potential offshore wind markets; and delivers a supply versus demand analysis across all major shipping activities which interact with the offshore wind industry.

The report's main findings and conclusions are set out below:

• Installed offshore wind mill capacity is expected to increase from about 5 GW by the end of 2012 to around 80 GW in 2022, representing an annual growth of over 15 percent. Growth in Europe will take place primarily in the North Sea and France, which bodes well for Danish companies' prospects.
• A total of 18 different ship types are involved in the setup, maintenance and dismantling of offshore wind turbines. The various tasks of these types of ships are described in detail in the report.
• The trend in offshore wind turbines is that they are getting bigger, and are therefore installed in deeper water and therefore further from the coast. This places great demands on companies in all segments and requires heavy investment.
• Danish companies belong to the most competitive in offshore wind, but are under great pressure , especially from British and German companies.
• The report finds that in particular there will be a big increase in demand for multipurpose project vessels ( MPPV ), supply vessels, standby vessels and crew boats. In the in latter two segments a predicted increase in demand of more than 300 vessels up to 2022 was anticipated.

The full report is available in .PDF at: http://www.shipowners.dk/default.aspx?site=english&func=webcontent.view&id=747773