Ramboll: How to Reinvigorate Offshore Wind Supply Chains

The worldwide shift to renewable energy increasingly depends on offshore wind power, which will be vital for achieving global net-zero goals.

While technological improvements and larger-scale projects signal promising growth for the industry, supply chain constraints present significant challenges, from developing infrastructure to managing costs.

As Chief Consultant and Supply Chain Lead for Ramboll's offshore wind advisory team, Elson Martins brings valuable perspective to these industry challenges.

His 10 years of offshore wind consulting experience, combined with deep knowledge of project development, supply chain management and innovation, leaves him well-positioned to help guide the sector forward.

Taking the UK as a case study, he examines strategies to strengthen the offshore wind supply chain.

What specific measures can the UK government and industry stakeholders take to reinvigorate the offshore wind supply chain?

Offshore wind development continues to ramp up in the UK and overseas. The UK government and local industry stakeholders have a chance to further support the local supply chain to maximise on this opportunity. 

This includes enabling investment in new infrastructure or trade missions to emerging offshore wind markets to supporting local research and innovation. Skills are also critically important for growth, therefore, supporting the development of trained professionals and the expansion of the sector’s workforce, or supporting the move from business and professionals in other industries into the offshore wind market.

A lot of good ideas have been set out in the UK’s Offshore Wind Industry Growth Plan presented this year, so we now need to keep the momentum and deliver sustained supply chain growth as we prepare ourselves to deploy more offshore wind farms.

Suppliers need to find their market and competitive edge in offshore wind. We need more supply capacity, which requires large investment, but we also need to facilitate how supply and demand meet each other and close deals in offshore wind, creating more visibility of what is needed and what is available — optimising the use of resources and the management of risk. 

It is possible to deliver a sector approach to this, with targeted support from government and industry allies.

Given the intense competition for supply chain resources, what strategies can be employed to attract necessary investments in offshore wind infrastructure?

The UK is one of the largest and most mature offshore wind markets in the world. 

When you look at the UK’s forward pipeline of projects and its location relative to other offshore wind markets, there is certainly a case to consider it a potential base for new supply chain capacity, which will be required to meet the expected ramp up in offshore wind deployment between now, 2030 and beyond. 

But there are other equally viable locations for this additional supply chain capacity required with similar internal market demand and geographical advantage, perhaps even a lower cost profile. So, it comes back to finding areas where you have a competitive advantage or a stronghold and creating a local framework that effectively enables the development of new infrastructure, addressing considerations on land, permitting and finance, for example.

Establishing the UK as a hub for specific technologies or services could also prove effective to attract further suppliers — or further investment from existing ones — and build a stronger cluster able to meet the local and international demand.

Can you provide examples of successful collaboration models from other offshore wind markets that the UK could adopt to enhance efficiency and reduce costs?

In general, the UK market has been proactive at exploring collaboration models to develop the supply chain. There are a good number of industry clusters, joint-industry initiatives and dedicated sector organisations and many interactions between developers and suppliers.

The challenges and needs faced by the UK market are to some extent also shared by other mature offshore wind markets in Europe. 

Markets such as the UK, Denmark, Germany or the Netherlands are under additional pressure to deliver the pipeline of offshore wind projects and to compete with the global supply chain. Thus, perhaps the next step is to look at collaboration with a focus on better differentiation or integration with the market, to draw on aspects that will make local suppliers more attractive to local projects or projects overseas. 

Cost is an important metric that can be improved but other aspects such as logistics, performance, experience or sustainability also play a part in the decision-making from buyers or investors in the sector.

Check out the latest edition of Supply Chain Digital and sign up to our global conference series – Procurement and Supply Chain LIVE 2025. 

Supply Chain Digital is a BizClik brand.