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The reNEWS Podcast
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The reNEWS Podcast
Visiting Dutch foundations fabricator Sif with CEO Fred van Beers
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Take a trip inside Sif's newly-expanded monopile manufacturing plant in Rotterdam with chief executive Fred van Beers who later sits down with reNEWS editor Stephen Dunne to discuss a looming slowdown in offshore wind and the rising threat from Chinese suppliers
Welcome to the Renews Podcast with me, Stephen Don.
SPEAKER_00There's about 25 gigawatts stock. What we as an industry are doing, what developers can do as well, is short-term let go a little bit of your margin ambitions. We are definitely keen to invest ourselves to bridge the gap.
SPEAKER_02Hello listeners and welcome to a special edition of the Renews podcast, where I'm going to take you on the road with me. I've just landed into Schiphol Airport in the Netherlands on my way to Dutch offshore wind fabrication company CIF in nearby Rotterdam. CEO, Fred Van Beers, has kindly agreed to show me around the Foundation manufacturer's newly expanded site on the Mass Flag and sit down for a chat afterwards. I've got about a 90-minute drive ahead to get to Zif, so I'll jump into the car and get going. It's invested over 300 million euro expanding its site in Rotterdam to handle the huge foundations needed for 15 megawatt of loss turbines. And that is where we'll start with Fred Van Beers taking me around the company's flagship facility. The first thing you see as you drive over to the factory are piles and piles of steel plates lined up waiting to go into the planet. And Van Beers explained these are shipped directly into a custom-made harbor from supplier Dillinger before entering the facility.
SPEAKER_00This is all custom around. So it's it's steel for uh every plate has its individual spot in a monopole. Every monopole is unique. Every monopole is designed to the specific spot in the field. So that means that we the the all the steel plates have their own thickness, diamond, di dimensions for to fit in a specific place in the monopol. Behind you there's there's three uh uh monopoles for Echo Wende, Dutch project, the final uh the la the last few that we have now uh ready for loadout. And they actually uh outfit it with uh uh fibro yetting system. Uh there's three of them. So there's a real monopol test now being executed in the coming month to see whether fibro yetting is a good solution to mitigate noise during installation instead of hammering, because the bigger they get the more impact, noise impact you have.
SPEAKER_02Before we even get to the door of the factory, there's a safety test, which I fail spectacularly when the ZIF boss correctly points out a breach on my part.
SPEAKER_00When we go in, I have to put the hands out of the pockets.
SPEAKER_02Safety uh record that make sure I'm I'll tell all the listeners I'm very safety conscious.
SPEAKER_00Safety conscious. And I can tell you the record for a visitor is ten to warn him ten times. So let's see. And we need the earplugs. And we need the earplugs now to put them in.
SPEAKER_01See, I am I am.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, you're very uh safety conscious. That's good, that's good to hear.
SPEAKER_02So 10 is the record.
SPEAKER_00Ten is the record to tell. Can you please take your hands out of your pockets? Okay. Uh but I I'll I'll promise you I will uh be polite all the way.
SPEAKER_02Inside the factory door, you see the steel plates being rolled in on floor-level rollers where the plates are being machined to the right size before moving down several lines to be welded together into trees before being rolled into cans. And what we're seeing here is a long hall with various different areas for uh working the steel and huge cranes really that can move the steel down the line.
SPEAKER_00That can move the steel at its at every individual workstation. So every workstation at this hole is 450 meters long uh and six or five meters wide, 70 meters wide, sorry. Um and every workstation has its own dedicated train because we want to avoid waiting times between stations, so everybody has to have its own train. Um and then indeed you see uh three uh parallel bays where we uh weld plates together in order to prepare them for rolling. And the whole layout is for uh to have to five hundred thousand tons, so uh two uh four what is it two hundred monopiles weighing two and a half thousand tons each can be produced here. So that's four thousand ten thousand tons per week.
SPEAKER_02Okay. And as you say, I'm stuck by everything's being done at ground level here, yeah. Uh which as you say gives you an advantage in the fabrication process.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and safety. So I mean all our customers, uh uh irrespective of how late or uh delayed we are, say safety first. Because it's uh it's having industry uh easily leading to issues and safety is our main priority and also our biggest challenge, to be honest. Uh because it's easily happening that you skip over or uh or have uh uh heat injury, uh scratching your fingers, etc. We have to be very careful with it. So the whole layout uh facilitates at least that overview is there. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02The only thing that strikes me, Fred, is when you look at the monopoles outside, the finished monopoles are huge. But at this point it's welding together of steel plates being done individually by individual workers.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02When you think about large factories, you think about automation and so on, but it's still a very human.
SPEAKER_00It's still a human factor, and and I think one of the main reasons is that every plate has its different thickness, length, um, qualification. We work with different materials and and the series are relatively small. So to bring in the level of automation to fully automate that, so to say, it's is in our view not weighing up to uh using labor as well. And there's also things like uh humidity, temperature change, uh etc. that have an effect and an influence on the welds, and since the weld quality has to be 100%, you need still the human interface to to control that. But things like how much we can we weld per hour, uh how uh controlled is the preheating of the steel plate, that is to a large extent uh uh automated, so to say. And and uh so it's a semi-automated process, um whereby it's also a fact that we have still certain potentials in the factory that we are working on to further optimize also the number of people that are working on this. But the main gain of this factory is that we skipped about five or six production steps out of the traditional way of working, which are the real uh uh on the benefit on one side. And the other benefit of this factory is that we can control the tolerances in such a way that we will be able to tell our customers that they can actually design the monopiles five to ten percent lighter, so less steel, and that's on a hundred thousand ton project, ten thousand tons of steel that you can save due to the production methods that we are applying here.
SPEAKER_02As we move down the line, we get to two huge steel rolling machines and dozens of pre-rolled cans being lifted around by giant grippers suspended from the ceiling, lining up, ready to enter the next assembly hall for welding.
SPEAKER_00And then we bring the plates as you can see now happening, either to another position or load them into one of the two rollers. So that's right, that's the next phase. The hole becomes higher and higher, and we start rolling these plates. And they start looking familiar to the you start a bit of what the monopoly. One that can handle cans, so straight, as you can see on the vor end. And this one can do cans and cones, the conical ones. So that uh they look like this. Ah, yes. And why is that? We talked about growing diameters. The top is always seven and a half or eight meters, semen's chemissa or um vessas, and the bottom uh is the grow that that's where the big diameters come in. So you need a tapered piece, so to say. And that means in in effect more conical cans than uh now than that we had in the past.
SPEAKER_02These two machines that we're looking at, these are the only elements in the whole factory that actually turn steel that roll it into a can, is it? Because I don't know why that's so Well you imagine you see these things and you imagine lots of these rolling steel, but obviously it's the can, it's individual cans.
SPEAKER_00That's a good question because that's what a lot of people think. Uh that this rolling uh part is the key of the process and the bottleneck, so to say. Two remarks to that. One, it's it's it basically it's not, uh it's the welding capacity that a factory has. The weld welding and the process, those are the two things. And uh we optimized the rolling process in such a way that the time you need to roll a plate and bring it to the next station, we sort of halved compared to the traditional way of doing things. Meaning that with a relatief low number of uh rollers we can do this. Second thing, and the third thing we did is after rolling, uh initial rolling and welding them together, you need to calibrate again. Bring it back into the roller and do a calibration to make sure that it's fully round within tolerance to later on build them together as a monopole. That part we put we invested in two more rollers that were that are at the end of the hole in order to not bring cans back against the process. So I said that process logistics are key and welding capacity is key, and we did not sacrifice on uh on all of them.
SPEAKER_02I'm struck by also the speed. You know, I've seen images of inside of factory halls, and you imagine it takes a long time to get the steel roll into cans. But as we've been standing here, I've seen plates welded, plates moved, I've seen cans, I'm seeing the gripper lift cans. It's really moves along at a fair clip, as they say.
SPEAKER_00I'm happy you say that. We have different types here, but yeah. Trying to give you good press here. No no, but that's true. We uh and uh no no we're getting better and uh and and and the and starts moving and moving better, and and and and I think it's a good observation that you as you say that there's a multitude of things happening, it's not uh a serial thing, aren't we?
SPEAKER_02The other thing that strikes me is obviously you've got all the cans here together. There's a for the listeners there's maybe a 10 cans in front of us here. Are each of those cans part of the same monopile or are they all different?
SPEAKER_00They are maybe part of three, and and that has to do with the building and loadout, most of all the loadout sequency, and based on the loadout sequency we have the build sequencing, and and that is determining the rolling sequency. And some cans are so to say multifunctional, where you will have the same dimension of can in various monopoles, but others are very specific. Most of them are very specific. So uh yeah, so planning logistics again is a thing, and as you can see, rolling the wrong set of cans has immediately an effect on your storage space and uh and room to maneuver because these things are big. They uh uh we are looking here at cans between eight and the maximum. The biggest one is nine and a half, probably nine meters. Um yeah, with four meters width, it's uh it's big stuff.
SPEAKER_02Turning the corner, it was into another huge hall where cans are being joined together to start looking like monopoles.
SPEAKER_00So this is the what we already had, and we are where we have basically two a north and a south growing line or uh assembly line where we build sections and when sections are ready, so welded from the inside, welded from the outside. This hole is 540 meters.
SPEAKER_02And it's a line where basically you put the cans together into something like our listeners would recognize as starts becoming uh at least part of a monopole. Sure. And you've got two uh am I right in thinking there's two growing lines? Is that what you call it?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, growing it's it's four setups where we build cans together. Okay, two on the north side, two on the south side, with sufficient room in between to move sections and cans around.
SPEAKER_02And we can see some of the cans sort of in the middle here and is that because they're they're not in the right place because maybe earlier repairs of some uh repairs and some and we we we always need a bit of buffer.
SPEAKER_01Sure.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, for example, for the reason that we just uh talked about uh a crane repair that's being done now. Uh we have cans coming in from um from Roomont that need to be stored or uh will be used in this pro in this project. Uh we have a bit of final preparation. Uh uh and it's basically the idea is that every build station has a complete set of cans sitting next to it so that they continue can continue the process.
SPEAKER_02As we walked along the line with foundations towering above us, the SIF man was quick to point out a flush connection between the various different cans.
SPEAKER_00I haven't told you how we do that because that's that's our that's the secret of the cook. Great secret. But you don't see any difference between one and the other, and that is with this sort of dimensions, you we basically work with uh tolerances of a clock maker. Here we we we know that we can make the difference compared to uh others. And what is like what does that difference mean for the difference means that if you think of a good question, because when this in the end is a monopole that sits in the in the in the soil and is constantly loaded. So the load lines that go through the monopole, it's important that they go very smoothly through there to make it simple. If the if the difference between the cans is too much, you get a sort of bend in the load lines, and they can so that you can solve that by adding more steel. But the other way around counts as well. If you can guarantee that it is close to zero, that difference, you can actually limit the safety margin in steel because you know that the load lines go through smoothly.
SPEAKER_02And your life of your monopoly does what it says on the tin rather than affect the life?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well they c a wind farm normally is calculated with a certain lifetime. Based on that lifetime, um the design is made, including the tolerances and the the fatigue tolerances, and and that's where we feel the trick is uh you still know it's 30 years, you still know what the load is, but your fatigue tolerances can be reduced. And that's of course exciting because that's new to the industry, and and and I know you know how conservative the industry is. But I think in order to really achieve the 30% reduction that we all want to see on levelized cost of energy, it's coming out of this sort of initiative and then and innovations. So that top secret method is saving some steel? 10% of steel. So 100,000 tonnes easily on the project is 10,000 tons of steel. Thinking about a circularity and CO2 footprint perspective, because we will talk later on on uh tender qualifications, etc., and and the non-pricing uh criteria meaning in the end are important because in the end you do this to reduce CO2.
SPEAKER_02It was then into the final part of the process: the blasting halls, where monopoles are painted before being rolled out onto the key side.
SPEAKER_01Six permanent uh coating shops and three temporary protein shops, nine in total.
SPEAKER_02And this is where they start to look like the finished product with the police or the green or the yellow, uh if there's an integrated CP.
SPEAKER_00This is uh I think the last one from the Echo Vender project is appearing and finished. Um that's where you are doing the final coating of those areas that you cannot touch when turning around. On the right side, here we have the first from the multicit. Basically, these coating shops here we do washing, uh blasting, all the recirculation of the blast and the water and the waste, what have you, and then the multi-layer coating is being done, metal spraying, etc. So you see this one is in the preparation phase, it's not done yet on the outside, but the whole flange, uh airtight ring inside of there, the top side has been prepared. First coating layer is on, the red one. So they're going to build it up, materialize, and then um but the thing doesn't move anymore, but it's rolling again on the roller beds. So in the area where it's rolling, you cannot paint. That's what we do on the other side.
SPEAKER_02And this is a finished monopier.
SPEAKER_00A finished monopier, but not finished in coating, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Of course.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, but this one is uh finished. They're quite quite not the longest no no no, they're they're relatively uh short. It's for the Balltic C. So it's not so deep, but it's uh yeah. You don't need more than what you need. And this is but it's a good point because that's that actually illustrates that the number of monopars we produce per week is not a often we get the question, are you up to four now? Yeah, we are up to four, but actually we should be six because they're a lot smaller. Whereas in the other uh example, four is actually extremely good.
SPEAKER_02And you know, we're seeing lots of conversation about deep water monopoles. Not so much about the diameter anymore, but uh start to talk about the length. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00You know, what point is the pull-off do you think for well we believe uh and I'll prepare that for 120 meters monopoles, so that's that's roughly 60 meters of uh water depth. Do you think that is achievable? Uh and we can do that.
SPEAKER_02You are listening to the Renews Podcast. For breaking news or to access our exclusive market intelligence on the global renewable sector, subscribe at renews. Now back to the show.
SPEAKER_00Purpose to deliver certain benefits to the customers, and we've now come to the phase to materialize these benefits in order to be able to sell them for the next wave to come. So we are able to deliver on the mon on the order book we have today. We are able to deliver that in time in the right quality, safely, and we expect to further optimize the ramp up during the remainder of this year.
SPEAKER_02So, all in all, I think correct me if I'm wrong, but you're probably six to eight months behind where you're expected to be. And CIF isn't alone in building or extending a factory in Europe and isn't alone in having that ramp up problem with with Isaiah wind. We've seen it with SIA wind in the UK. I won't ask you to speak for those guys, but like what why is it so hard to get a factory like this up and running? What are the reasons behind those delays?
SPEAKER_00From a SIF perspective, indeed, I think specifically the first element is that we did build something new also to us, which has taken more time to understand than initially thought of, for sure. That was a mistake we made. And the other element, and I think all of us are facing that, it's still a people's business. And in order to train uh uh hundreds of people working in a three-shift system in a reliable and robust way, is simply taking time. Uh, more time than than than you may uh have thought of uh in the beginning, that's for sure. Luckily, in our case, we we uh build in sufficient uh float in our uh order book, and we didn't fully book the order book, as you probably may recall. 25 we only booked uh 54 percent, and uh and 26 was uh booked at 75% or something like that. So we had time to to deal with these uh unexpected uh delays. But uh that that's one side of the equation. The other side of the equation is that these monopiles are big and have become even bigger uh now. And as you've seen yourself, it's it's not easy stuff to handle uh and move around, and that that is an additional challenge to to handle.
SPEAKER_02Is there, and I was struck by this walking around, is there is is that part of the lesson here for not just SIF but the whole industry in that you know I've been writing about offshore wind for 15 years and can remember the very quick pace from the six megawatt to the eight megawatt to the 11 megawatt to 14, then there were 15, then there was there's a talk to 2020. That stop that talk has stopped, but every incremental step along that stage has required the supply chain to ramp up and become bigger. Is that one of the lessons here that the delays you've had show that every single move from the turbine down is challenging for everybody and that we need to focus as an industry on this platform?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I uh yep, and I think the word missing in in what you just said is increasingly challenging. So it's not a linear sort of uh ramp up because I agree with you. In the beginning, uh going from four to six meters an hour case, depending on the turbine, was relatively easy, and that I think also created a sort of a sense of this is doable in further ramping up, because uh the next step was then was a bit more difficult, but actually not that difficult. Uh, up till the moment where we are now, that we are facing uh what I call the Airbus 8 uh 380 uh uh phenomenon, that you reached you have reached a certain level whereby things are not so easy anymore, and uh physical restrictions, but also uh uh space restrictions, uh not only for us. We've seen how big the side is and what the space is that we need, but you also need increasingly big size for the vessels to sail. For the uh the uh we we looked at the Haliade and how big the blades are. Well, these these bigger turbines require even bigger blades and where to store them, how to handle them. It all has become increasingly difficult and expensive and risky to deal with, and I think uh that that's the phenomenon that we are have been faced with now over the last few years.
SPEAKER_02We saw developers put pressure on the OEMs to come out with new machines. Where in you know, over the last few years and OEMs then tried get into this arms race to create bigger machines? I think that's the heat has come out of that a little bit now through to the the correction of the offshore wind industry post Ukraine and and COVID. Where do you see the mindset of the industry now? Is it focused on industrializing what the supply chain that we have now, or will it take, you know, is it easy for it to switch now to focus on another large turbine to bring try to bring costs down?
SPEAKER_00What I tend to see, and also, I mean, I I'm not so sure if I'm fully objective here, but what I in the discussions I'm having and in listening and listening to many of my colleagues, I see a clear tendency to now stick for a while to this 15, maybe pimp it up to 18 megawatt platform and industrialize and optimize uh the supply chain for that. We are uh as as foundation builders in Europe, we're organized uh uh and discussing this as well, and and and and and we'll come to that topic maybe later, but we clearly see that when we stick now to this 15-80 megawatt and look at what has been agreed on the North Sea Summit, for example, then this the European supply chain is up to the task. And we we spent ourselves a decent one and a half years investing in ramping it up. Our colleagues in the UK, Spain uh are doing the same or have been doing the same, and they're they're getting they're set up to deal with this now. So I think it's to the benefit of all of us in order to also realize this 30% reduction of of uh CapEx OPEX uh cost in order to make the levelized cost of energy uh more uh attractive or doable in the business case, is uh we we have it all now in hand to do it uh by sticking to uh a 15 to 18 megawatt platform and and harvesting on all the investments done.
SPEAKER_02We have it all, but as you signaled last week uh when you brought out your results, there is a slowdown now happening in tender activity in 2027. Yeah. And at the moment 28. Can you give us a little bit of of colour about that issue, what you're seeing in the market, and why we're seeing that slowdown in tender activity?
SPEAKER_00First of all, I I I uh we did a bit of a calculation in in-house, and that uh we feel there's about 25 gigawatts stuck now in Europe and UK. That's a lot. And why are they stuck? Because they were all released, uh tendered, um, auctioned in a period whereby calculations were still assuming a certain um um uh supply chain price uh offtake possibility. Uh that due to geopolitical reasons, the war um increasing uh cost of money uh have have made the business cases not viable. And that that was realized, and in the new setup we see CFDs now coming and based on the UK model uh being rolled out in Europe, and that that actually, in my view, creates this this downturn massively now because everything that has been auctioned or tendered for is without these subsidies and CFD in in Europe at least, or in the UK is not actually uh that they're thinking, well, in the next round we could probably get a better price for it. So they are stuck and we're still waiting for the new ones, and that has now resulted in a massive downturn. I think the biggest country is suffering is Germany at the moment. But also the Netherlands, we've seen quite some uh setbacks on this that we are all struggling with and governments are struggling with because it's difficult to give on retro in retrospect another subsidy uh to those projects because that will create a huge uh pile of work for uh for all uh legale people to deal with. But it doesn't help us as an uh as a total. So my plege is that that I think we are we willing to step over that hurdle, accept some support coming in now with have without having all these legal fights and make sure that all these investments in not only in in fabrication but also in installation vessels. Because that we've we've talked a lot about in the past about the shortage of installation vessels. A massive investment round has been done, ships are coming to the to the business now and are sitting idle. Uh if not and that's not good for for us as an industry.
SPEAKER_02What would it mean for a company like SIF, having invested in this facility here behind us, to go through a period of a couple of years where activity was really low?
SPEAKER_00The main thing is loss of experience. So we lose the the company will survive. Last week we were declared strategic under the Net Zero Industrial Act, uh, which is a great achievement. Uh we we know we have a lot of support to bridge that downturn from banks and uh government and financial inter and other financial institutes, but we need to let go about then in in such a threats case a significant part of our people that and basically letting go all the experience we gained during that period.
SPEAKER_02And the challenge there will be ramping back up. That's exactly it.
SPEAKER_00Letting them go is is not nice, but is doable. But how to they they won't come back, that easy. So ramping up again, and if you look at the ramp up that that we foresee, it's quite steep, and that that will be a costly one for us, but for everybody.
SPEAKER_02Is there anything beyond what you've just said around governments maybe looking again at some of those support and subsidy contracts? Is there anything beyond that that governments can do? And what is the role developers have in trying to place farm orders during this period?
SPEAKER_00Well, uh for developers I'm not so sure what they can do other than actually really supporting the the European supply chain. Um because there's always this this uh interesting option um to go for the cheap uh uh Asian solution. That's what that was specifically China, of course. But that on the long term is is I think a mistake, to be honest. So live up to what everybody is preaching, that this is a European supply chain, and that we we we have to uh support each other in that. I think what we as an industry are doing, to be honest, and what developers uh uh can do as well is uh short term let go a little bit of your uh margin ambitions. We we are definitely keen to invest ourselves in order to bridge the gap and keep the experience on board. So that that's that's I think the gesture we as a supply chain in general are making or can make further, but that that would also require developers to take a similar approach in that and live and let live.
SPEAKER_02For the good of the interest.
SPEAKER_00For the good of the the long-term interest uh for all of us.
SPEAKER_02Just finally on this, before maybe we pick up one or two points. You like I said, you've just invested heavily in this factory and you're now sitting probably where you didn't expect to be with a 27 and 28 downturn. You know, how frustrating is it that you've done what governments wanted you to do and you've invested, you've done it at risk, and now you're sitting potentially with a pipe uh with a lack of a pipeline that you were promised?
SPEAKER_00We claim to be civilized people, so I will keep the the piece of wood back where it should be in the woods. But you know, on a scale of of zero to ten, it's it's ten. It's it's ultimately frustrating that we we've done our bit in living up to uh the promise of investing heavily in in a ramp up. Of course, nobody had foreseen these wars and and the effects coming from that. I I take that one, but if we truly believe that we want to be energy independent, and I think late the lot last week developments have shown that it's it's even more important to to be as quickly as possible uh energy independent, let alone uh uh believe what we are doing in and uh with respect to the energy transition. We need to prioritize certain things in life, and and one of them, in my view, is energy security for for not for us as a business alone, but for the whole community and for the stability in Europe.
SPEAKER_02You mentioned the competition. In monopiles, in some ways the horse is bolted in that we see now regularly big shipments of monopiles coming in from a number of different fabricators in China. That happened relatively quickly, uh I would I would say historically actually there was monopiles from China and then it stopped and it was mostly Europe and but now we're seeing uh the Chinese players really compete. How do you look at that?
SPEAKER_00Well, let's let's see how it happened, because in all fairness, uh when that we we saw a boom of offshore wind uh a few years back, and uh and that's why we built this factory, etc. But as a European supply chain, we were not ready to facilitate all those projects in that short period of time. So that led to a situation that developers that had to live up to their promises to uh in uh in relation to the tender and deadlines of delivering power had to decide to go and look for alternatives. So, in a way, that we opened the Chinese market ourselves, in all honesty and fairness. I think what we should learn from that is that when we roll out or prepare ourselves for the new uh boom, we need to do that in a controlled way to start with. And that's why at the uh that was uh I was at one of the discussion tables in in Hamburg uh during the summit, and that was one of the issues that we need a controlled rollout of projects now from the various countries in order to prevent this from happening again, that we see a massive peak, not with huge price increases and what have you, and all sorts of logistic problems, but do it in a controlled way. So that that's one learning we took from that time. Going further down the road, uh we are not against Chinese imports, we are heavily against subsidized and non-level playing field uh imports. I think, and there's two sides to that. One is if you look at it from a pure uh CO2 footprint perspective and what and and building wind farms at sea to reduce the CO2 um emissions, and then bringing them in, these heavy structures from Asia, you can ask yourself the question: is this the right thing to do? That's one thing. That I think should should pay uh should be translated in non-pricing criteria and tenders. That's that's that's one side of the thing. And the other side is that the steel that is you we use steels for steel for more foundations, steel in China is is maybe half the price from European steel, and that is absolutely impossible without subsidy. So protecting uh protecting steel plates plates to be imported in Europe or the UK is happening, but what's not protected is the semi-finished product or the end product. And in a business like ours, or in tower business, or whatever, heavily steel dependent, that is is uh creating a non-plann playing field uh market, and this has to be corrected quite soon in Brussels and in London.
SPEAKER_02So, just so I can I'm clear on this an Asian fabricator can import a finished monopole without any duties, duties or tariffs. But if they introduce a steel plate, there is a tariff of the plate.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, there's a tariff. And coming back in all honesty to developers, I know for a fact that some of our friends are trying to find ways to bypass the duties by welding plates in China together, claiming it's a semi-finished product and not a plate, and then importing them without duties. And I think that is the sort of responsibility uh we have as Europeans to not do and try to uh stimulate for the sake of a short-term gain.
SPEAKER_02But when you look with whatever data you have, when you look at the price differential in a European-made monopile and a Chinese-made monopile, is that the only differentiating factor, or are they also achieving cost savings in other areas?
SPEAKER_00They they are for sure. I mean, I think the labor costs, etc., uh, will be different, but our claim, and I'm now talking on behalf of the whole industry, not only CIF, is that the efficiency and procedures that we have in the meantime developed can deal with that sort of labor cost uh differences. So, in that sense, we are it's an easy one. It's it's it's steel. Deal with the steel and deal with the uh end product uh when in relation to steel and and the rest we will have to deal with ourselves because competition is good, push, push for um cost competitiveness and and production efficiency is good and should and should be part of this industry as well because it's healthy. So protecting us against the Chinese is not what we need. We need to have a level playing field.
SPEAKER_02Are you seeing Europe recognize your arguments? And you know, we've seen the Net Zero Industry Act, we've seen the Industrial Accelerator Act last week. You know, are they gonna meet you guys in the European steel industry and go for what you're saying?
SPEAKER_00Yes. The question is how quickly. So, yes, one example, um I said it before, we we last week we were we were given this notice for uh to be part of the Dutch uh Net Zero Industrial Act Strategic Company Group of two at the moment. There's only two companies in the Netherlands, one of them is SIF, which illustrates that they take this seriously, that we have certain protectionism, we're protected because of that and have some benefits because of that, which is good, we like that. Now, the things like we discussed on steel uh tariffs on semi-finished finished products need to be uh dealt with quickly. Uh we see the drive in Europe to do that, but we and in The Hague for our country, but we also see the inexperience and question marks in the eyes of people dealing with that because after 30 years of open market uh politics and open market rules and regulations turning quickly into a sort of protection mechanism and and and turning that around from ambition into real rules and regulations is a challenge. And that's why we as an industry, in my view, need to actively help and and they're open to that help and support.
SPEAKER_02When would be too late?
SPEAKER_00And uh if something if we don't change things in in 26, it's too late.
SPEAKER_02And are you fearful that Europe in the midst of a geopolitical uncertainty now where we see the US, you know, America first, we see uh Russia carrying out its activities, you know, we see China on the other side, and this criticism of Europe being very slow to act and rules and regulations. Are you concerned Europe just won't get its act together on this?
SPEAKER_00I I I I tend to say that we we must, otherwise we're toast it, and the sense of urgency is is increasing uh per week, in my view. So um you see, I mean we had the similar thing with the defense industry, yeah, of course, the famous 5%. And in the first two years, uh last two years, everybody was struggling how to get their act together. But now we see the first examples of big factories being set up, uh momentum gaining momentum in in rolling this out. And I have a uh strong belief that that we are able to do this uh when once the uh pressure is fully on. And also in my private life, I I more and more uh get the feedback that people start realizing uh shit, this is this is serious, this is real, we need to do something.
SPEAKER_02Just finally on on China and and the thr the threat there, are you confident that if the level if the field is leveled that you can still compete with Chinese fabricators on price because they are very aggressive?
SPEAKER_00I I am convinced, and you know, but there's another mechanism we didn't touch on yet, and that is system integration. I talked about system integration from a component perspective and taking that out, but there's another uh uh I think huge potential potential here is that we look more at standardized and integrated concepts of wind farms because today a developer is looking at the tier one suppliers and doing its own integration without letting the various suppliers really bundle their forces in order to come with an optimized concept. And in the discussions I've had and I'm having today with uh uh TNI contractors, with uh offline um with with with OEMs and with individuals in the industry, what you can actually achieve by doing value engineering, uh, system integration, um uh standardization of concepts when you have a longer term pipeline of 15 megawatt uh wind farms. That's where the real benefit of levelized cost uh to reduce level life cost of energy is in. Optimization of your OM uh uh principles and contracts. That's where the real beef is.
SPEAKER_02Finally, Fred uh we're a week after you announced your retirement, uh, which is coming up uh later this year, and obviously a stay on for a period in an advisory capacity for I think until early next year. You've already told me you don't play golf. So I guess I'm interested to know when you reflect on your eight years as you've said in offshore wind. You know what what what are you taking from the industry at this part of your career and would you have a parting message for the sector?
SPEAKER_00I think we we touched on it already. I mean that's uh learn a bit more from other industries and uh and and and take some uh bigger steps in in working together in partnership controlled rollouts and uh and and don't exaggerate in uh in ramping up too quickly.
SPEAKER_02So if you don't play golf will what will it be fishing something else?
SPEAKER_00I hate fishing as well so that no no I'm I'm a keen sailor so I I love sailing I love giving advice and using my experience in a in in on a project basis I guess in all honesty I haven't given it a real thought I also like bike biking I'm trying to figure out what's the right balance between using professional experience and and using free time while still healthy.
SPEAKER_02Being a good grandfather maybe well a fair win Steve thanks for having me and thanks for being on the Renews Podcast. It was a great pleasure having you thank you the Renews podcast was produced and edited by me Stephen Dunn. Click subscribe wherever you get your podcast to make sure you never miss an episode. For more exclusive market intelligence on the renewable sector see renews.biz