Freight forwarder deugro has delivered 58 km of HVAC subsea cable from Finland to Crete, Greece, which will be used in the Cyclades IV interconnector project.
The Cyclades HVAC interconnector project will connect the Southern and Western Cyclades with Greece’s mainland grid. deugro was responsible for the cable pick-up at Prysmian’s manufacturing facility in Pikkala, Finland, ocean transport, and the final delivery in Heraklion.deugro also provided a 23 m-diameter carousel spread, as well as engineering services, cable spooling and relevant personnel. deugro chartered United Wind Logistics’ deck carrier Vestvind for the move.
Prior to collecting the cables, deugro’s teams in Rotterdam and Milan designed several technical modifications to the deck carrier – including installing the carousel spread, a loading tower, deck tensioner and auxiliary deck equipment such as generators. All installations were carried out at the ports of Rotterdam and Vlissingen in the Netherlands, in collaboration with deugro’s Rotterdam office and supported by local partners. After eight days, the equipment was fully installed and the deck carrier departed to collect the cables in Finland.
The vessel was anchored approximately 400 m offshore the port in Pikkala. After nearly 10 days, the cables were spooled – with the assistance of dteq Transport Engineering Solutions and a subcontracted spooling team – into the tank and Vestvind then departed for Crete. Here, the cables were unspooled to the installation vessel over the course of seven days, before Vestvind sailed back to Rotterdam for demobilisation and handover.
“From the very beginning, the project presented several challenges, such as sourcing the only vessel available capable of loading a 23 m carousel suitable for cable loading and dealing with the notoriously poor weather conditions along the Finland–Crete route. All 58 km of cable were transhipped onto the cable-laying vessel as planned,” saud Francesco Pignati, project manager, deugro Italy.
HLPFI reported last week that deugro completed a 1,334-tonne LNG module transfer.
