MARINE engineer Tekmar Energy has won a major contract to supply its new cable protection devices for a wind farm in Dutch waters.

The Newton Aycliffe manufacturer, whose products safeguard offshore wind farm cables from the elements, has been awarded the deal by VBMS to supply its latest innovation, TekTube® , to the Westermeerwind near-shore project .

The contract comes less than three months after the company demonstrated TekTube at the Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult’s (ORE Catapult) National Renewable Energy Centre in Blyth, Northumberland.

Tekmar will make 92 of its systems next summer to protect the cables for the Siemens’ EPC (engineering, procurement and construction) project.

The manufacturing will be done at Tekmar's new factory, a former Tetley Tea warehouse, which it opened this summer adjacent to its existing plant. The expansion was part of wider ambitions to increase overall turnover from £22m to about £50m and create between 30 and 50 jobs.

TekTube is the latest in subsea cable protection systems and was specifically designed to help drive down costs, improve offshore installation rates and protect cables for the service life - typically 25 years.

TekTube has been designed for installation onshore rather than offshore. The system is then transported to the offshore site to be secured to the turbine foundation, sealed and prepared to be received by the cable installation vessel. The work before TekTube is deployed offshore offers significant savings on installation vessel time and, ultimately, costs.

James Ritchie, chief executive at Tekmar, said: “We are most pleased to be working closely with VBMS (formerly VSMC) on our sixteenth contract together.

"The project also marks a key business milestone as it will be the first time we supply our new patented technology TekTube and it will be assembled within our new facility in the North-East which was launched earlier this year.”

Westermeerwind represents the 32nd offshore wind project that Tekmar has worked on to date, and follows a string of recent wins on the UK’s Dudgeon wind farm, Cape Wind in the US and Luchterduinen in the Netherlands.

With more than 28 years’ experience, the Aycliffe firm has become a market leader in the design, manufacture and supply of subsea cables, umbilicals and flexible protection systems for the renewable energy and oil and gas industry.