Show notes
Emily Rees and Magnus Willett from ORE Catapult discuss the upcoming UK Offshore Wind Supply Chain Spotlight in Edinburgh. The event brings together innovative companies that are establishing the UK as a global leader in offshore wind energy, from small startups to major manufacturers.
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Emily and Magnus, welcome to the show. Hi, it's great to be here. Thanks so much. Thanks so much for having us. You, you're both preparing for the UK offshore wind supply chain Spotlight 2025, in which Joel and I are looking forward to attending up in Edinburgh on December 11th. Uh, and it's an event that showcases where the UK stands in Global Offshore Wind Development.
Uh, but Emily, I, I know there's some challenges in the UK at the moment and, uh, the UK is working through those. Want to talk to some of the. Those challenges and how the spotlight is gonna help work through those. Yeah, uh, of course. So, um, I think that, you know, we as the uk like have identified quite a while ago that offshore wind was a really massive opportunity for us.
You know, we've got a really amazing offshore wind resource, [00:01:00] um, and. So we really wanted to take advantage of it and, you know, push forward with a, with that industry. Um, the things that we've come up against is that, um, ability to then provide homegrown, um, supply chain, you know, actually have, uh, businesses in the uk being that, that main supply, um.
In the first port of call, you know, there was the, uh, a lot of the, um, sort of components that we, we sort of have to, to build the fixed bottom offshore wind was all coming from abroad, so it's like, right, well, how do we reap the benefits internally of this really amazing industry that we can build? And so, um, having, uh, supply chain spotlight events where we can really shine a light on the different companies internally in the UK that are actually providing services and providing, um, the supply chain for offshore wind, um, is, is super critical.
And the, the catapult, um, the offshore renewable energy catapult, uh, where Magnus and I both from, um, is, you know, [00:02:00] really key into making that happen. I know when you look online at the re catapult and you see like the people that you partner with, the organizations, the, I mean OEMs, um, all of the innovative technical technology companies that are coming out there, it it, it's, it's so great to see.
Right. And then this is me sitting in my, my American chair a and I talked about this. We talked a little bit about it off air, about the fact that wind energy in general, when you're, when you're talking offshore wind, onshore wind, it is a huge. Industrial and economic opportunity for all the countries that are involved in it.
And simply because things like this don't come along that often, right? Like you have the, you know, the automo, I look at it like that, like the automobile was a thing, right? Like, oh, we went from horses to this. This is a huge opportunity. It made a lot of people, a lot of money, put a lot of people to work.
Wind is the same thing in my perspective, and maybe not at that grand of scale, the automobile, of course, but. You are seeing with your organization, the involvement with people like we have the, the Siemens facility in [00:03:00]Hull, and I know you guys do a little bit of work with them, uh, bringing that manufacturing onshore into the uk.
But not only is it bringing manufacturing what you're doing here with the UK offshore wind supply chain spotlight is taking. The small companies, the, the, the, the two person companies, the 10 person companies, the 50 person companies, and saying, Hey, we also have really smart people here that are doing really cool things in operations and maintenance or like, you know, helping with some cool innovation for, uh, construction or development.
So there's a lot of things happening in the uk. I mean, one of the reasons why we're talking to you guys right now is we want to, we wanna show the rest of the world that you guys are taking advantage of this opportunity and hopefully spur more people on to do the same thing. Absolutely. Right. I'm, I'm, I think the, the key thing for us is in the UK we're now at a point where we're trying to maximize the supply chain opportunity and, and, um.
The supply chain is a, is a big pyramid, right? You have, you do have your OEMs and your tier ones at the top, but that stretches all the way down into the university spin outs. And, [00:04:00] um, and the kind of the one two person bands and the, and Orca pull we're, we're here to support them as much as we are to support those larger organizations.
Um, and we've, we have to, you know. Uh, supported likes of GE and, and, and Siemens through our, our big testing facilities and blade test facilities, drive train facilities. But we're also testing kind of two, three person, um, organizations. New, um, dynamic cabling solutions for floating wind, right? So we span across an entire, um.
An entire supply chain. And I suppose part of the Supply Chain Spotlight event that we run, um, every year is, is to, is to give all organizations an equal playing field, to present themselves, to project developers, to OEMs, to government, as to why their technology, why their business can solve some of the biggest challenges that offshore wind has in the uk.
But also globally, right? Um, this is a global [00:05:00] market and the, and the uk, um, is, is is a leader in the deployment and the operations in the maintenance phase. And we have a huge amount of knowledge and we wanted to share that, uh, globally as as, as well as here in the uk. I know we have some questions and some topics we wanna get to, but I want to focus on that one point you said there, Magnus, of the the level playing field.
'cause when we were exploring this supply chain spotlight, one of the things that popped up to me was it doesn't matter who you are, you get the same booth, whether you're Siemens cesa, or you're, you know, the two person band, same. Same, same style. Yeah. You, you get, everybody gets a level playing drill because everybody's solution is needed.
I like that a lot. Yeah. It, it, it, it's one of the core principles for us every year when we sit down with our, with our events team and our supply chain acceleration teams, it's, you know, that's a firing principle is to make sure that everyone gets a, a fair and equal opportunity to participate. And, and Magnus, the consequences of not having a supply chain in the UK are, are really severe when you look at it because of the.[00:06:00]
The amount of deployment the UK is talking about, the, the complexity of some of these projects, particularly floating offshore. There's a lot of, uh, technology that needs to be developed and it needs to be developed very quickly, and especially on the servicing side, the o and m side. Uh, there's a ton of knowledge sitting in the UK that can solve these problems, but it, it does feel a little odd.
I, I'd have to say, as a small business owner, I know how hard that is, is to take that first leap into. Showing a product, trying to get it introduced. If you come to the spotlight and in a couple of weeks in, in, it's in December, so it's not that far off. When you get to an event like this, this is the opportunity you need to get started or to expand, which makes I, I think, answers so many questions about how the UK is going to move forward in offshore wind.
We will work, um, through a number of different initiatives to understand, um, the challenges the industry is facing. [00:07:00] So we have a pretty good handle on, you know, what are, what are the challenges that they're facing now, but also the challenges. What are the, what are the challenges they're gonna face in five years time?
Right? Um, commercialization of technology does take a while. Um, and so we need to understand those challenges. And so Spotlight is, is is also part of that, right? It's that knowledge sharing that, that exchange of information between, between the, the various different elements of the supply chain and the project developers to say, this is our challenges.
This is the solution we have and try and do and try and bring them together under one roof, um, and, and showcase their technology. And it's important we get it right. You know, we, we, we, we have a, uh, an an, an ongoing energy transition. There's an economic opportunity there. We have to try and maximize that, um, and provide as much opportunity for job creation, for IP creation.
Economic development and, and, and, and, and everything and, and far and few in between. So it's super important we get that right. And part of that is just, [00:08:00] just you shine a, shine a light on these companies. A lot of things are happening in the UK at the moment, particularly offshore wind. But there's been several wins and, and particularly into the way that the, uh, systems, I'll call an overall systems of offshore wind are established from, uh, geez OCS to CFD to re catapult to all the s subject matter experts that are, that are there.
I wanna talk to that a little bit about, because I think a, a lot of other countries don't realize necessarily the strength that is already in the United Kingdom. I think that the, the key thing here is that the sort of mentioned earlier that the, the, the UK has, um, been very, um,