CABLES & INSTALLATION In an ever-changing market, cable company JDR is at the cutting edge of business.
Innovative and dynamic, its an organisation thats always thinking ahead
Well connected
umbilical systems and marine cables for a broad range of applications throughout the oil and gas sector, offshore renewable energy industry, and seismic and defence markets. This year JDR Cable Systems was winner of a Queens award for enterprise in recognition of the companys international trade success. Over the past five years JDR has made significant investments in new people, facilities and equipment to manufacture larger and longer subsea umbilicals and power cables for worldwide projects. New production facilities at quayside locations in Sattahip, Thailand, Hartlepool, England and Krimpen, Netherlands have enabled the company to deliver complex systems to a wide range of overseas projects. The company opened its purpose-built factory in the deepwater port of Hartlepool in July 2009 and is already expanding into adjacent buildings and adding larger machinery to serve demands from the growing offshore renewable energy market. The Littleport, Cambridgeshire UK factory provides complete workover control umbilical and reeler packages to the majority of deepwater oil and gas projects worldwide. Service centres in Houston, Texas, and Bergen, Norway provide the companys global service capability. The Hartlepool facility has two
DR is a leading provider of customdesigned and manufactured static and dynamic subsea power cables,
2,200 tonne carousels allowing the manufacture of medium voltage subsea and surface power cables for the offshore renewable energy and oil and gas markets and their complete offering of production control umbilicals used throughout the world in offshore oil exploration. The expansion will provide two additional 4,000 tonne carousels and a Vertical Layup Machine capable of building the largest offshore power cables and umbilicals in these markets. Pat Herbert, Group CEO of JDR Cable Systems Holdings, commented: The expansion of our operation in Hartlepool and new factory in Krimpen is designed to triple capacity and throughput in our major facilities to meet customer demands. The development of the offshore renewables industry, combined with the need to recover more oil and gas reserves from existing fields, has led to an increase in demand for highly
specialised subsea power cables and umbilicals and our customers have led us to significantly increase our productive capacity. The site in Hartlepool was designed specifically to manufacture these products, along with longlength step-out umbilicals for oil and gas projects, and the response from the market has been very positive with booked orders and an advanced stage of tendering for many other projects around the world. Patrick Phelan, Managing Director, JDR Cable Systems Ltd., added that: We invested 16million in Phase 1 of Hartlepool and have created a state-of-the-art factory to produce array cables for offshore wind farms, and subsea power cables and production umbilicals for offshore oil and gas projects. This is very significant because this factory is Britains only purposedesigned subsea power cable factory that is located at a deepwater
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RIGHT Jim Price from the South West RDA with JDRs managing director Patrick Phelan
quayside. From here, we can load out single products weighing up to 2,200 tonnes each with our current capacity, growing to 4,000 tonnes by early next year. JDR Cable Systems Ltd. has driven UK and international growth from innovation generated at its Cambridgeshire powerbase - of which Phelan is incredibly proud. He says: Littleport is where the business was originally established over 30 years ago and is our headquarters for R & D. From here, we produce intervention workover umbilical systems for control of subsea equipment at up to 10,000 feet water depth. Despite its global reach, JDR has managed to maintain an engineering presence in the UK. It has teams of design engineers who work pre-order, post-order and in R & D, for umbilicals, power cables, and for the design of powered reeler systems. These engineers specialise in these different product groups and are based in Littleport, Hartlepool, and Newcastle respectively. Phelan adds that the companys graduate development programme had been key to ensuring a continuous stream of new talent. We also have a team of design engineers in Bangkok, supporting our factory on the coast of Thailand, he says. In December JDR was awarded the contract for the supply of subsea
power array cables for the first phase of London Array Offshore Wind Farm by the project consortium of DONG Energy, E.ON and Masdar on the back of the array cables for Greater Gabbard offshore wind far and the 25 km export cable for South West RDAs WaveHub projec. The first phase of the London Array development, consisting of 175 wind turbines and two offshore substations, will be installed in water depths of up to 23m some 20km (12 miles) from the Kent and Essex coasts in the outer Thames Estuary. The wind farm will be connected by subsea export cables to an onshore substation at Cleve Hill, on the North Kent coast. From the substation, the electricity will be fed into the existing 400kV transmission network. The scope awarded to JDR includes the engineering, design and manufacture of over 200km of 33kV array cables complete with proprietary hangoff and termination systems providing the essential link between individual wind turbine generators, wind turbine generator arrays and the offshore substations. The cables will be produced in 2010 and 2011. We set about taking a leading role in the offshore wind market back in 2004 when we participated in the Beatrice Demonstrator project, says Phelan. That was a very small wind farm with only two turbines linked back to the Beatrice offshore oil platform, which already had a power cable running back to shore. However, the turbines were the first 5MW machines to be installed offshore, and at 50m water depth this was deep water as far as wind farms are concerned. That experience was vital in preparing ourselves for the technology required on Round 2, and will also be relevant to the deepwater locations required for Round 3. Based in Europes major technology cluster, JDR also deserves recognition as an innovator in its own right. Phelan says: Innovation is central to everything we do. From our product design, to factory and machinery design, we are always innovating. Offshore oil and gas constantly presents new challenges and offshore renewable energy is a whole new industry. To take a leading role, you have to lead in terms of innovation, from factory processes to large scale system design. Our heritage of 30 years of everdeeper oil and gas projects has helped to create the solid foundation of creative technology that is enabling us to lead the way in terms of subsea power cables and umbilical systems for the entire offshore energy industry.
For more information on JDR, visit
www.jdrcables.com.
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