A MAJOR new facility providing the components to anchor wind turbines to the sea-bed will take the investment at a Tees Valley steel plant to more than £9m in two months.

Tata Steel announced yesterday that it is investing an additional £2m in its Hartlepool tube mills to enable them to service the fast growing European offshore wind turbine market.

It follows an announcement in early August that the firm was investing £7m in improving the welding capabilities at two of its three Hartlepool mills.

Yesterday's announcement will see a supply base established for steel tubular sections to be used in the fabrication of wind turbine foundation structures, known as jacket foundations.

It will provide all the parts in kit form that fabricators need to construct any of the complete range of jacket foundation designs seen entering the market over the past 18 months, ready for welding into the finished structures.

It will mean customers can source all their steel components from a single supplier.

Work on modifying buildings and facilities for cut-to-length and profiling lines at the Hartlepool site is scheduled to begin this month and to be completed by Spring next year.

In a new agreement, also announced yesterday, the plant is to work alongside German steel tube producer Eisenbau Kramer (EBK) so that any components one can't supply the other will, but both will use plate manufactured by Tata Steel plants in the UK.

It comes as the offshore wind industry enjoys massive growth, with nine sites planned under round three of the UK's offshore wind development programme in British waters alone.

North-East firms such as TAG Energy Solutions, which recently opened a plant producing turbine foundations at Haverton Hill, Billingham and Heerema at Hartlepool, which has diversified into fabricating turbine substations, are already set to be heavily involved in the industry.

Ramsay Ross a director for tubes at Tata Steel, said: "It would be crazy with an emergent market in North-West Europe, but particularly to meet the UK Government's aspirations, to see all that steel not coming from the UK, particularly when you have the mills at Hartlepool.

He added: "We have seen a number of enquiries in the past 12 months for jackets and we think this is something we can service and can be beneficial to people such as TAG at Billingham and Heerema in Hartlepool."

Despite yesterday's announcement Mr Ross said Tata Steel had not dropped its plans for a facility on land it still owns at the former Teesside Cast products (TCP) site near Redcar producing steel monopile structures to fix wind turbines to the seabed in shallower waters.

He said: "To be honest the market for monopiles in Europe has been poor.

"One of our concerns is when are the round 3 projects going to come forward.

"If they come forward in drips and drabs there will not be a market sustaining a demand for UK fabricators to invest in this marketplace so the Government has a role to play.

"We have still got plans on the shelf for a monopile facility but until we have a clearer picture of where the market is going in the UK we are going to pursue the jackets market."

Jacket foundation structures are particularly suited to the development of offshore wind farms located in deeper waters.

It is a further boost to the Hartlepool mills where 90 workers faced an uncertain future six months ago, a number reduced to 11 job losses by August.

The announcement also adds to the North-East's growing expertise in the offshore wind industry.

PD Ports is aiming to turn Hartlepool Dock into a centre for offshore wind industries, with the site already home to JDR Cables.

In addition Tekmar Group, based in Newton Aycliffe, County Durham, produces cable protection devices and Europe's leading wind turbine testing factory is at the New and Renewable Energy Centre, in Northumberland.