deugro Moves 600t of HVDC Cable for ElbX Project

deugro has transported three cable baskets carrying more than 600 tonnes of HVDC cable from Sweden to Germany for NKT and TenneT Germany’s ElbX project.

The cable sections were manufactured at NKT’s facility in Karlskrona, Sweden, and transported as continuous lengths of more than five kilometres each. Each loaded basket measured approximately 8.52 x 8.52 x 4.80 metres and weighed up to 226 tonnes.

Maintaining each cable section as a single continuous length was a key requirement because the ElbX river crossing has been designed as a jointless cable system.

To manage the continuous manufacturing and spooling process, deugro developed a dedicated marine logistics concept. A coaster remained alongside the Karlskrona facility for around two and a half weeks, acting as both floating storage and shuttle vessel while the three baskets were completed.

The baskets were transferred onto the coaster using the factory gantry crane before being moved through a double-banking operation onto a chartered heavy-lift vessel equipped with two 150-tonne onboard cranes.

The vessel then sailed to Brunsbüttel, Germany, in approximately 24 hours.

For the final leg, deugro evaluated several transport concepts before rejecting a purely road-based solution due to ground conditions, infrastructure restrictions and road load-bearing limitations.

Instead, the project team developed a multimodal route combining further water transport with heavy haulage.

“Following detailed route and feasibility assessments, we developed a multimodal solution combining water transport with heavy-haul road transportation,” said Claudia Reinhold, Deputy Branch Manager at deugro Hamburg.

The cable baskets were loaded onto a pontoon and moved by tugboats to Peters Werft in Wewelsfleth, close to the ElbX staging area.

A floating sheerleg crane travelled with the pontoon and was used to discharge the baskets directly onto SPMTs at the destination. The loads were then transported to the final staging area.

The marine and unloading operations had to account for weather, wind, water levels, tidal windows and the load-bearing capacity of the quay.

The ElbX project forms the Elbe River crossing of SuedLink, the HVDC transmission system designed to move renewable electricity from northern Germany to major consumption centres in the south.