The Hanseatic and University City of Rostock and 50Hertz have concluded a heritable building right contract to develop the Rostock Offshore Quarter (ROQ) which will serve as the latter’s offshore wind transmission operations hub.
The contract, with a term of at least 60 years, relates to a plot of land at the port in Warnemünde on an approximately 23,000 square metre area.
These include an administration building as well as an indoor and outdoor warehouse with quay connection and berths for supply and transport ships.
A total of around 180 employees are to work at the site.
The property is located in the immediate vicinity of the open sea and is therefore an ideal location for the operational management of the electrotechnical facilities on the Baltic Sea, 50 Hertz said.
In the administration building with 100 workstations, which are mainly used according to the flex-desk principle, 50Hertz wants to accommodate several units.
These include a maritime coordination centre for operational planning of ships and helicopters, maritime surveillance and maritime crisis management in the event of accidents or accidents.
It will also feature an offshore control centre for controlling and monitoring the substations at sea with round-the-clock operational readiness.
Finally, there will be an offshore logistics centre with office, workshop and storage space for the maintenance and repair of the offshore power grid and for supplying the platforms.
In the warehouse, 50Hertz will keep submarine cables on large turntables, among other things, for any necessary repair work.
Dirk Biermann, chief operations officer at 50Hertz, said: “The location in Rostock-Warnemünde in the immediate vicinity of the shipyards and important service providers is ideal for us to bundle our offshore activities in the Baltic Sea.
“The Baltic Sea will be an important supplier of electricity in the coming decades, and other large offshore projects are in the approval process or in the planning stage.
“We will adapt to this in good time. We are investing around €80m in this attractive location, which is excellently connected to Deutsche Bahn’s long-distance transport, local public transport and highways and motorways.”
The property intended for the Rostock Offshore Quarter still has to be cleared and freed from contaminated sites in the coming years.
50Hertz will set up an interim office and an interim storage facility in a container facility in the immediate vicinity on a transitional basis from 2025.
The subscription date for the ROQ is scheduled for 2028.
By then, the harbour basin is to be deepened to 10 metres so that heavy-duty ships of up to 200 metres in length can also dock and depart from the quay edge – which is open to the public.