The company has had a busy year building new products, including a 25 ton constant tension winch with self contained electro-hydraulic powerpack and controls for offshore mooring duties, and a 36 ton chain winch for a linkspan bridge at Boulogne ferry terminal. This chain winch incorporates a purpose built gearbox with totally enclosed gearing and a direct drive chain gypsy for control of the linkspan.
The expansion of offshore wind farms has resulted in a boom in the building of support vessels, and North Sea Winches has secured an order to supply anchor winches to a fleet of newbuilds to DNV specification. These vessels tend to be aluminium so the winches are designed with weight in mind, and a radial piston motor drive was selected to obviate the need for heavy gearing.
Other notable successes include the supply of a pair of 15 ton mooring winches for a cable laying vessel, each with de-clutchable automatic spooling gear.. A pair of 45 ton luffing winches for an overseas customer and a batch of electric mooring capstans for a UK ferry terminal are also currently on build.
North Sea Winches designs and builds in-house and is thus quite versatile when it comes to catering for individual customer requirements. The technical department will be on hand at Seawork 2010 to discuss the specific needs of all interested parties .
