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Leonardo da Vinci heralds Teesside renaissance

[ December 2, 2021   //   ]

AV Dawson’s Port of Middlesbrough set a new record when it handled the largest offshore wind vessel ever to pass under the city’s Transporter Bridge.

Built this year (2021), by subsea cable company Prysmian Group, the Leonardo da Vinci is described as the most advanced cable-laying vessel in the world. It has the highest cable carrying capacity in the market and a very large bollard pull to allow for ploughing in very challenging seabed conditions. It can also operate for extended periods in challenging weather and work to the deepest depths.

She will be making regular visits to the North East as Prysmian’s Northern European marine base is at the Port of Middlesbrough.

Prysmian’s installation manager, Peter Watson, said: “The Leonardo da Vinci will be a key enabler of a carbon-neutral world by 2050. We are delivering most of the biggest projects in the world and the Leonardo da Vinci has a critical role to play in ensuring that our market share grows in the future.”

AV Dawson managing director, Gary Dawson, added: “It just illustrates how Teesside and the River Tees is evolving to embrace and lead the way in exciting new industries such as offshore wind.”

He said that in the last ten years Prysmian ‘s Teesside operation has grown “at an incredible rate” and the group now rents a number of large warehouses on site and uses the Port of Middlesbrough to manage all its Northern European marine operations, adding: “We’ve made significant investment to support Prysmian’s expansion, from building bespoke warehouses with roof access for cable spooling operations to investing in the quayside. We’ve been planning for the Leonardo da Vinci’s arrival for the last two years. This has involved investing millions in dredging a deeper berth and dredging the channel to enable the Leonardo da Vinci to reach the berth. This investment gives us deep-water berths with a depth of up to 9.5 metres plus the tides, which enables us to not only support Prysmian with their largest vessels but also to support other new customers too, in offshore wind and other sectors.”

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