Singapore chases Europe’s 30,000-ton wind converter orders

By James Calloway

A 30,000-ton high-voltage direct current converter platform under construction at Seatrium Ltd.’s northern Singapore yard is scheduled to leave for the North Sea in 2028, sit 60 kilometers offshore and handle about 2 gigawatts of wind-generated electricity.

Resembling a 15-story building, the yellow structure will help send power from offshore turbines back to land. The design is the largest of its kind in the world; construction takes five years and service life should reach 40 years, while GE Vernova Inc. supplies the HVDC technology.

What does Singapore’s 20% capacity share mean for shippers?

Singapore is repurposing expertise built over decades for the largest offshore oil and gas companies as it bids for Europe’s wind build-out. The city-state and nearby islands now hold up to 20% of global HVDC platform capacity outside China, up from a negligible share a few years ago, according to Ember analyst Lam Pham.

Seatrium chief executive Chris Ong said the country and the company had invested, making the platform a showcase of what Singapore could produce.

Seatrium, partly owned by Singapore state investor Temasek Holdings Pte., was selected by European grid operator TenneT Holding BV to build four platforms for North Sea clusters. About 7,000 workers will construct them at yards in Singapore and Batam, an Indonesian island 50 minutes away by ferry.

TenneT puts the cost of each platform and its connecting infrastructure at as much as €5 billion ($5.6 billion). For shippers and freight forwarders, the larger constraint is the small pool of yards with the expertise and capacity to build such units; each platform requires five years of specialist construction. The four-platform award will absorb scarce capacity well before the 2028 sailing, leaving project-cargo carriers exposed to schedule slippage if yard work slips.

For carriers, the route is long, but the production economics favor Singapore. “Singapore would make it cheaper, even including the higher shipping costs, because the industry is very labor-intensive and labor costs in Europe are super high,” Lam said.

Singapore wants to position itself as the top choice for European developers. Middle Eastern yards have been upended by regional conflict, while Chinese and South Korean yards are mostly meeting domestic demand and European yards are occupied with defense vessels. Those constraints leave Singapore competing on specialist offshore fabrication and labor productivity.

Can Europe turn subsidies into installed capacity?

Global offshore wind investment fell 72% year over year to about $12 billion in the first half of 2026, according to BloombergNEF. The collapse leaves HVDC as one bright spot, but it also shows how difficult the wider market remains.

Europe is still backing expansion to meet its green-energy goals. The UK awarded a record 8.2 gigawatts in its latest subsidy auction, while Germany and the Netherlands are implementing new revenue-protection mechanisms. With sufficient state support, BloombergNEF expects offshore wind installations to double by the end of the decade, led by China, the UK and Germany.

The region still faces high costs, supply-chain shortages and regulatory hurdles, all of which can affect turbine, converter and grid schedules. For developers and their logistics providers, state support improves the commercial case, but scarce specialist-fabrication capacity leaves delivery exposed.

Why do farther-offshore wind farms need HVDC?

Wind turbines generate alternating current, while HVDC platforms convert it to direct current for transmission over longer distances with less energy loss. The need rises as developers push wind farms farther from crowded shores, a trend that increases demand for large offshore converter structures.

Seatrium is positioning for that demand. As of July, the company was pursuing S$9 billion ($7 billion) of HVDC and HVAC projects across Europe and Asia-Pacific, and clean-energy contracts currently account for about 40% of its order book. Ong hopes to capitalize on offshore wind demand over the next two years.

Ong previously served as chief executive of oil-rig builder Keppel Offshore & Marine before its 2023 merger with Sembcorp Marine created Seatrium. He framed the infrastructure requirement as part of Europe’s effort to secure future power supply: “The scale and the massive need for offshore wind is a big security drive. It has to happen.”

As European subsidies turn into a larger installation pipeline, Singapore’s next test will be whether qualified yards can convert demand into on-time platforms rather than allow scarce capacity to delay North Sea projects.