Prysmian Group confirms €1 billion portfolio

Italian subsea cable systems firm Prysmian Group has confirmed plans to invest up to €1 billion by 2024 in cable-laying projects around the world.

The company says it already has a 35-40% share in the high voltage submarine and underground cable market, which is set to grow to more than €8 billion a year in terms of projects awarded by 2025.

“In 2021 Prysmian acquired projects worth €4.8 billion,” the company says. “In early 2022, the group was awarded the contract to build Neu Connect, the first power interconnection between Great Britain and Germany, a milestone project within the construction of the pan-European power grid.”

At the end of March, Prysmian was awarded a contract to supply, install and test a 214-mile submarine fibre optic cable in south-east Alaska, linking the Alaskan capital of Juneau with Prince of Wales Island to provide high-speed broadband to residents there for the first time.

Also in March, the company completed the world’s longest submarine electricity connector between the UK and Norway.

“As we showed just a few days ago, with the early completion of the NSL interconnector between the UK and Norway, the world’s longest, we can assure unique levels of reliability and precision in executing projects in our sector,” said Hakan Ozmen, EVP Project Business Prysmian Group.

Prysmian owns and operates the world’s largest and most advanced cable-laying vessel, the Leonardo da Vinci, which it calls a ‘technological gem’.

Built by Vard Group (Fincantieri) and launched in December 2021, the vessel will be instrumental in expediting the time needed to complete submarine interconnection projects, while also decreasing their environmental impact, Prysmian says.

“The group’s fleet of cable-laying vessels also includes the Giulio Verne, the Cable Enterprise and the Ulisse, in addition to the new barge Barbarossa,” says the firm. ”Moreover, in addition to the Arco Felice (Naples) base, it can also count on the Middlesbrough operating base in Great Britain.”

Prysmian says production capacity will be expanded along with technological equipment upgrades in the firm’s plants in Italy, Finland, France and Germany.

Prysmian says its 525 kV P-Laser cable system has unparalleled efficiency in energy transmission with an aramid-armoured cable for submarine depths of up to 3,000 metres.