NKT announced that the company has won a project to install 200 km of 80 kV high-voltage DC offshore power cables for the second phase of the Johan Sverdrup oil field development project in Norway.

A press release said that the award, worth approximately 110 million euros, is conditional upon finalization of the formal contract which is likely to take place within a few weeks. The cable system, which will offer a +/-80 kV HVDC solution, is expected to be ready for use in late 2019.

The cable will transmit power from the Norwegian power grid to the offshore oil field, the release said, adding that power from shore to the oil platform is an environmentally sustainable solution, significantly reducing carbon emissions from oil and gas producti
Johan Sverdrup was described as among the five biggest oil fields on the Norwegian Continental Shelf. “I am very pleased that we continue working with our long-term customer Equinor Energy AS,” said NKT President and CEO Michael Hedegaard Lyng. “I see the letter of award as proof of our premium DC technology capabilities and of our ability to provide turnkey solutions with NKT Victoria as a differentiator.” He added that the award further bolsters the company’s “leading market position in the oil and gas segment, which along with offshore wind and interconnectors represents good growth opportunities for NKT.”

Earlier in 2018, NKT completed supply and installation of the high-voltage DC offshore power cable solution for the first phase of the Johan Sverdrup development project. Installation was conducted by NKT’s own industry leading cable-laying vessel NKT Victoria operating at 600 meters depth, which marks one of the deepest installations of bundled high-voltage DC cables in the world. In addition, the Johan Sverdrup 1 solution from NKT now constitutes the world’s longest extruded offshore cable to an offshore oil and gas platform facility.

South Korea’s LS Cable & System announced that the company has signed a contract with Orsted, a Denmark-based power company, to supply high-voltage cables for Hornsea Project Two, the world’s largest offshore wind farm.

A press release said that LS Cable will supply 350 km of onshore high-voltage cables, including 400-kilovolt cables, by 2021. The site is located 89 km off the Yorkshire coast in the U.K.

"This contract is meaningful because it continues the trend of supplying cables for new renewable energy projects in Europe, the home of cable business. We hope to expand opportunities for projects in Europe, North America and Asia," said LS Cable & System CEO Roe-Hyun Myung.

Per the company, when the project is complete and operational in 2022, it will be capable of supplying electricity to well over 1.3 million homes and surpass its sister project, Hornsea Project One, as the world’s biggest offshore wind farm. The two sites will produce a combined 2.4 gigawatts of electricity.

Prysmian reports that the company has won three turnkey projects to supply and install submarine inter-array cable systems that will represent France’s first large-scale offshore wind farms, and collectively require 345 km of cable.

A press release said that two of the projects, from Eolien Maritime France (EMF), are for two offshore wind farms—Fécamp and Courseulles-sur-Mer, owned by EMF and wpd offshore GmbH—located off the North France coast. Those contracts are worth more than €200 million, and are expected to be completed next year. A third project, for the Saint Nazaire wind farm—also owned by Eolien Maritime France—is worth more than €20 million, and is being secured by a consortium between Prysmian and Louis Dreyfus Travocean.

 “These new important awards confirm that we have all the capabilities to achieve our ambitious growth targets in the offshore wind farm market,” said Hakan Ozmen, an executive vice president of the Prysmian Group. “Our investments have strengthened both our production capacity and installation capabilities and the market is showing its confidence in us.”

The three wind farms will require 33 kV three–core submarine cable systems with XLPE insulation. The Fécamp project will connect 83 wind turbine generators (WTGs) with a total capacity of 498 MW, while Courseulles-sur-Mer will connect 75 WTGs with a total capacity of 450 MW. Cable, accessories and terminating services will also be provided by Prysmian for the 80 WTGs for the 480-MW capacity of Saint Nazaire.

The projects, the release said, will represent France’s first large-scale offshore wind farms. Prysmian will rely on the resources of General Cable’s NSW subsidiary. Cable cores will be manufactured at the Group’s center of excellence in Montereau-fault-yonne, France, and then assembled and finished in Nordenham, Germany, providing the French market with Prysmian’s locally manufactured cable systems.

For Fécamp and Courseulles-sur-Mer, Prysmian will be the turnkey provider, supplying and installing all interarray cables between the WTGs. Delivery and commissioning of the cables are expected during the period 2020-2022, depending on the individual project timelines.

“These awards represent an important milestone for Prysmian as they are related to the first major projects in this market and they show that our ambition of becoming a one-stop service provider covering the entire supply chain is credible and sustainable,” said Alessandro Panico, sales team manager, offshore wind, Prysmian Group. To date, the Group notes that it has secured offshore wind projects worth more than €650M in 2017-2018.

India has initiated an anti-subsidy probe into alleged increased imports of select copper wire rods from Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam that led to complaints from domestic players that include Hindalco Industries and Vedanta Industries.

A story in Economic Times said that the commerce ministry’s investigating arm, the Directorate General of Trade Remedies (DGTR), has stated that production and exports of continuous cast copper wire rods in these four countries appear to be subsidized. That activity has caused material injury to the domestic industry through their volume and price effects, it said. The authority’s investigation will cover 12 months over 2017-18 as well as data from 2014-17.

The directorate will determine the existence, degree and effect of alleged subsidization. If found necessary, the office will recommend the appropriate amount of countervailing or anti-subsidy duties needed to protect the domestic industry.

In the application filed with the office by Hindalco Industries and Vedanta Industries (Sterlite Copper) on behalf of domestic industry, they claimed that the producers/exporters of the goods in these countries have benefited from the "actionable subsidies" provided at various levels by the governments of these countries, including their different provinces and municipalities, and asked for remedies.

India has already imposed countervailing and anti-dumping duties on various kinds of steel from China.

JSW Steel Limited has signed a contract with Primetals Technologies for a two-strand wire rod mill to be located in Toranagallu, India.

A press release said that Primetals Technologies will supply the complete wire rod mill. That includes all mechanical and electrical equipment for two-strand production from a single-stand roughing mill. Two independent rolling lines will then join at the coil-handling area for further compacting and unloading. Among other Morgan-branded equipment, the mill will include a new design of individually driven pre-finishing mill that eliminates the need for uploopers, a faster cooling nozzle clamping and unclamping method for shorter change
times, the latest generation 6 Morgan high-speed laying head with SR Series pipe technology, and a recently patented stepless reform design.

The contract also includes site supervision and spare parts, the release said. Designed for a guaranteed maximum speed of 115 m per second, the mill will run at 220 tons per hour for an annual capacity of 1.2 mmt. Start-up is scheduled for the end of 2019.

The release said that this represents the third such purchase by JSW Steel from Primetals Technologies, which previously installed a single-strand wire rod mill and a bar mill.
Part of the JSW Group, JSW Steel was founded in 1994 and exports to more than 100 countries on five continents. At its website, JSW notes, “We are India’s largest steel exporter and ship to over a hundred companies across five continents. And we are just warming up.”

TE Connectivity reports that it will sell its subsea communications business (SubCom) to equity firm Cerberus Capital Management for $325 million in cash.

A press release said that SubCom has completed more than 100 cable systems and deployed over 610,000 km of cable through its eight cable ships. The deal, which includes the plant, 63 employees, and all the related process, development and sales elements, is expected to close by the first quarter of 2019.

TE Connectivity, which has an annual revenue of $13 billion from connectivity business, reports that it will use proceeds from the sale to fund share repurchases. “It strengthens our business model; resulting in a stronger growth profile, reduced cyclicality, higher margins and a greater return on investment,” said TE Connectivity CEO Terrence Curtin.

In other news, SubCom reports that it has won a contract from MainOne, a global connectivity and data center solutions provider, to extend its submarine cable system into West Africa’s francophone region. Its additional branches connecting Senegal (Dakar) and Cote D’Ivoire (Abidjan) will connect to MainOne’s 7,000-km cable system, which extends from Portugal to Nigeria, and will inject new technology that upgrades the system to a potential capacity of 10TBps by November 2019 when the subsea system becomes operational.