Monopile supply contract signed

Company entered market in 2022, notching successive wins

Annual production capacity to expand to 150,000 tons

From left: Heo Cheol-hong, CEO of GS Entec, and Clément Elvic de Balzac, CEO of the Taean Offshore Wind project. [GS Entec]
From left: Heo Cheol-hong, CEO of GS Entec, and Clément Elvic de Balzac, CEO of the Taean Offshore Wind project. [GS Entec]

GS Entec, a subsidiary of GS Global, will supply 37 monopiles — the key foundation structures for offshore wind turbines — to the Taean Offshore Wind Farm being developed off the coast of Taean in South Chungcheong Province.

The company signed the monopile supply contract Wednesday at the Seoul headquarters of Taean Wind Power Generation Co., the project developer.

Under the agreement, GS Entec will begin full-scale manufacturing in July 2027 and complete deliveries in stages by the end of August 2028.

Monopiles are the primary substructure of offshore wind turbines, fabricated by welding large steel plates into a cylindrical form to support the turbine and tower.

Applicable in water depths of up to roughly 50 meters, monopiles cost less to manufacture and take less time to install than jacket-type foundations, which is why more than 70 percent of offshore wind projects worldwide use them.

The waters off Taean are considered well-suited to monopile construction, with shallow depths and thick sediment layers providing favorable ground conditions.

The Taean project is being co-developed by Singapore-based Vena Energy, a global renewable energy developer; Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP) of Denmark; and Korea Western Power.

The farm will have a total capacity of 504 MW, with construction targeted to begin in 2028 and be completed in 2030.

GS Entec entered the monopile business in 2022 through a strategic technology partnership with Sif, the Dutch company that leads the global market. It went on to supply all 64 monopiles for the Yeonggwang Nagwol Offshore Wind project in 2023, and has now secured the Taean contract as well.

This month, the company completed a factory scale-up backed by an investment of about 300 billion won ($221 million), lifting annual production capacity more than threefold — from 40,000 tons to 150,000 tons. The Taean offshore wind project will be the first large-scale order to put that expanded capacity to full use.


keg@heraldcorp.com