ORE Catapult Showcases UK Wind Innovation

Emily Rees and Magnus Willett from ORE Catapult discuss the
upcoming UK Offshore Wind Supply Chain Spotlight in Edinburgh. The
event brings together innovative companies that are establishing
the UK as a global leader in offshore wind energy, from small
startups to major manufacturers. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News,
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show? Email us! Emily and Magnus, welcome to the show. Hi,
it's great to be here. Thanks so much. Thanks so much for having
us. You, you're both preparing for the UK offshore wind supply
chain Spotlight 2025, in which Joel and I are looking forward to
attending up in Edinburgh on December 11th. Uh, and it's an event
that showcases where the UK stands in Global Offshore Wind
Development. Uh, but Emily, I, I know there's some challenges in
the UK at the moment and, uh, the UK is working through those. Want
to talk to some of the. Those challenges and how the spotlight is
gonna help work through those. Yeah, uh, of course. So, um, I think
that, you know, we as the uk like have identified quite a while ago
that offshore wind was a really massive opportunity for us. You
know, we've got a really amazing offshore wind
resource, [00:01:00] um, and. So we really wanted to take
advantage of it and, you know, push forward with a, with that
industry. Um, the things that we've come up against is that, um,
ability to then provide homegrown, um, supply chain, you know,
actually have, uh, businesses in the uk being that, that main
supply, um. In the first port of call, you know, there was the, uh,
a lot of the, um, sort of components that we, we sort of have to,
to build the fixed bottom offshore wind was all coming from abroad,
so it's like, right, well, how do we reap the benefits internally
of this really amazing industry that we can build? And so, um,
having, uh, supply chain spotlight events where we can really shine
a light on the different companies internally in the UK that are
actually providing services and providing, um, the supply chain for
offshore wind, um, is, is super critical. And the, the catapult,
um, the offshore renewable energy catapult, uh, where Magnus and I
both from, um, is, you know, [00:02:00] really key into
making that happen. I know when you look online at the re catapult
and you see like the people that you partner with, the
organizations, the, I mean OEMs, um, all of the innovative
technical technology companies that are coming out there, it it,
it's, it's so great to see. Right. And then this is me sitting in
my, my American chair a and I talked about this. We talked a little
bit about it off air, about the fact that wind energy in general,
when you're, when you're talking offshore wind, onshore wind, it is
a huge. Industrial and economic opportunity for all the countries
that are involved in it. And simply because things like this don't
come along that often, right? Like you have the, you know, the
automo, I look at it like that, like the automobile was a thing,
right? Like, oh, we went from horses to this. This is a huge
opportunity. It made a lot of people, a lot of money, put a lot of
people to work. Wind is the same thing in my perspective, and maybe
not at that grand of scale, the automobile, of course, but. You are
seeing with your organization, the involvement with people like we
have the, the Siemens facility in [00:03:00]Hull, and I know
you guys do a little bit of work with them, uh, bringing that
manufacturing onshore into the uk. But not only is it bringing
manufacturing what you're doing here with the UK offshore wind
supply chain spotlight is taking. The small companies, the, the,
the, the two person companies, the 10 person companies, the 50
person companies, and saying, Hey, we also have really smart people
here that are doing really cool things in operations and
maintenance or like, you know, helping with some cool innovation
for, uh, construction or development. So there's a lot of things
happening in the uk. I mean, one of the reasons why we're talking
to you guys right now is we want to, we wanna show the rest of the
world that you guys are taking advantage of this opportunity and
hopefully spur more people on to do the same thing. Absolutely.
Right. I'm, I'm, I think the, the key thing for us is in the UK
we're now at a point where we're trying to maximize the supply
chain opportunity and, and, um. The supply chain is a, is a big
pyramid, right? You have, you do have your OEMs and your tier ones
at the top, but that stretches all the way down into the university
spin outs. And, [00:04:00] um, and the kind of the one
two person bands and the, and Orca pull we're, we're here to
support them as much as we are to support those larger
organizations. Um, and we've, we have to, you know. Uh, supported
likes of GE and, and, and Siemens through our, our big testing
facilities and blade test facilities, drive train facilities. But
we're also testing kind of two, three person, um, organizations.
New, um, dynamic cabling solutions for floating wind, right? So we
span across an entire, um. An entire supply chain. And I suppose
part of the Supply Chain Spotlight event that we run, um, every
year is, is to, is to give all organizations an equal playing
field, to present themselves, to project developers, to OEMs, to
government, as to why their technology, why their business can
solve some of the biggest challenges that offshore wind has in the
uk. But also globally, right? Um, this is a
global [00:05:00] market and the, and the uk, um, is, is
is a leader in the deployment and the operations in the maintenance
phase. And we have a huge amount of knowledge and we wanted to
share that, uh, globally as as, as well as here in the uk. I know
we have some questions and some topics we wanna get to, but I want
to focus on that one point you said there, Magnus, of the the level
playing field. 'cause when we were exploring this supply chain
spotlight, one of the things that popped up to me was it doesn't
matter who you are, you get the same booth, whether you're Siemens
cesa, or you're, you know, the two person band, same. Same, same
style. Yeah. You, you get, everybody gets a level playing drill
because everybody's solution is needed. I like that a lot. Yeah.
It, it, it, it's one of the core principles for us every year when
we sit down with our, with our events team and our supply chain
acceleration teams, it's, you know, that's a firing principle is to
make sure that everyone gets a, a fair and equal opportunity to
participate. And, and Magnus, the consequences of not having a
supply chain in the UK are, are really severe when you look at it
because of the.[00:06:00] The amount of deployment the UK is
talking about, the, the complexity of some of these projects,
particularly floating offshore. There's a lot of, uh, technology
that needs to be developed and it needs to be developed very
quickly, and especially on the servicing side, the o and m side.
Uh, there's a ton of knowledge sitting in the UK that can solve
these problems, but it, it does feel a little odd. I, I'd have to
say, as a small business owner, I know how hard that is, is to take
that first leap into. Showing a product, trying to get it
introduced. If you come to the spotlight and in a couple of weeks
in, in, it's in December, so it's not that far off. When you get to
an event like this, this is the opportunity you need to get started
or to expand, which makes I, I think, answers so many questions
about how the UK is going to move forward in offshore wind. We will
work, um, through a number of different initiatives to understand,
um, the challenges the industry is facing. [00:07:00] So
we have a pretty good handle on, you know, what are, what are the
challenges that they're facing now, but also the challenges. What
are the, what are the challenges they're gonna face in five years
time? Right? Um, commercialization of technology does take a while.
Um, and so we need to understand those challenges. And so Spotlight
is, is is also part of that, right? It's that knowledge sharing
that, that exchange of information between, between the, the
various different elements of the supply chain and the project
developers to say, this is our challenges. This is the solution we
have and try and do and try and bring them together under one roof,
um, and, and showcase their technology. And it's important we get
it right. You know, we, we, we, we have a, uh, an an, an ongoing
energy transition. There's an economic opportunity there. We have
to try and maximize that, um, and provide as much opportunity for
job creation, for IP creation. Economic development and, and, and,
and, and everything and, and far and few in between. So it's super
important we get that right. And part of that is
just, [00:08:00] just you shine a, shine a light on these
companies. A lot of things are happening in the UK at the moment,
particularly offshore wind. But there's been several wins and, and
particularly into the way that the, uh, systems, I'll call an
overall systems of offshore wind are established from, uh, geez OCS
to CFD to re catapult to all the s subject matter experts that are,
that are there. I wanna talk to that a little bit about, because I
think a, a lot of other countries don't realize necessarily the
strength that is already in the United Kingdom. I think that the,
the key thing here is that the sort of mentioned earlier that the,
the, the UK has, um, been very, um,