Northumberland-based Osbit has signed a contract with Jan De Nul Group to design and build a shallow water trencher. The machine will bury high-voltage cables up to five metres below the seabed on offshore wind campaigns across Europe and beyond.

The trencher will be designed in Northumberland and built at Osbit's Build and Test facility at the Port of Blyth, transitioning seamlessly between subsea and land trenching without operator intervention. The award builds on a long-term partnership between the two companies, following Osbit's previous trencher, Swordfish, which has operated successfully since 2022.

The new machine is a surface-fed jetting trencher, engineered for deep burial capability in a compact, highly transportable footprint. Its modular construction allows it to be dismantled into containerised sections for rapid transportation between sites, with the design and build programme scheduled ahead of the agreed 96-week timeframe.

Osbit, part of Venterra Group, is an offshore engineering specialist based in Riding Mill, Northumberland, with a Build and Test facility at the Port of Blyth. Jan De Nul Group is a Belgian offshore construction company specialising in cable installation and subsea infrastructure.

David Foster, Project Manager at Osbit, said: "This project is the result of many months of close collaboration with Jan De Nul. Building on the success of the previous trencher project gave both teams a strong foundation and a clear understanding of the operational challenges the equipment needs to solve." Foster added: "We have focused on creating a highly adaptable and future-ready system that can support a wide range of offshore cable burial campaigns while remaining lightweight, modular, and easy to mobilise."

Phil Pennington, director at Osbit, said the contract represented continued investment in North East engineering capability, adding: "Osbit has always maintained strong ties to our local supply chain here in the North East. The region's industrial heritage gives us exceptional manufacturing capability, positioning the North East as a world-leading hub for engineering innovation in the energy transition."

The structural driver is the technical challenge of burying high-voltage cables through shallow nearshore environments as Europe's offshore wind sector expands into the North Sea's remaining developable sites. Osbit's planned expansion at Blyth is expected to create further engineering jobs across the region through 2027 and beyond.

For the sector, the project is in detailed design at Osbit's Riding Mill headquarters, scheduled for delivery from Blyth in late 2026, with commercial operations expected to begin in early 2027.

Source: northumberlandgazette.co.uk / energyglobal.com