Dubai's Drydocks World wins wind power deal

Drydocks World, the ship-repair unit of state-controlled Dubai World, has won a contract from Norway’s Aibel to build the world’s biggest offshore power converter platform for wind power. Drydocks World will build the facility, which will receive electricity from wind farms, in Dubai for the DolWin wind farm cluster near Dollart in the German sector of the North Sea, the company said in a statement distributed at a news conference. It didn’t disclose the value of the deal. The company will begin building the platform in July and expects to complete it next year before shipping it to Aibel’s yard in Haugesund, Norway for outfitting and installation at its North Sea site in the summer of 2014. The converter platform, which will use 20,000 tons of steel and convert alternating power into direct current, will be the largest such facility ever built, Aibel president and CEO Jan Skogseth told reporters in Dubai. The platform will be 92.3 metres long and 72.8 metres wide. Drydocks World, which is in talks with banks to delay payments on $2.2bn of debt, will need to increase staff by 10 percent to build the platform, chairman Khamis Juma Buamin said at the conference.