Company in Sydney Harbour launches new business marshalling offshore wind turbine parts

Provincial Energy Ventures, a privately owned coal pier in Sydney Harbour, is being renamed the Atlantic Canada Bulk Terminal and has begun offering services for marshalling huge steel parts for offshore wind turbines.

Richard Morykot, an engineer and vice-president of the bulk terminal, said the company will still deal in coal, but it is undergoing a major transition.

"I think it's new energy for this region and there are spinoffs," he said. "We just completed a lot of work and we are slowing down as of today, but there's been a lot of different activity on the site for a lot of different companies, a lot of local companies.

"Sand bags, cranes, labour, civil construction companies, welders, riggers. There's many parts to this and ... when we build the business bigger, there'll be more opportunities."

The coal pier was built early in the last century with slag from the former Sydney steel plant, covering more than 40 hectares of land with a 500-metre-long wharf.

Morykot said its construction makes it ideal for holding massive steel materials and the wharf has room for multiple ships to load or unload turbine parts.

Because of its history and construction, the company was able to get the site ready in a couple of weeks with very little investment, mostly by clearing and levelling the ground.

"We're very fortunate," Morykot said. "I mean, this was a steel facility and steel facilities are built, as you can imagine, to support steel, so they're very robust and they're strong and we're benefiting from that.

"It's a great, positive legacy of the Sydney steel plant."

The 15 giant steel tubes now on the Sydney site are called monopiles. They are foundations that will be driven into the ocean bottom to anchor turbines at sea.

The monopiles, weighing hundreds of tonnes, are made of steel nearly 12 centimetres thick, are up to 10 metres in diameter and up to 80 metres long.

They are destined for offshore wind projects in the U.S., where the industry is well underway.

There is a similar facility in Newfoundland that has the space and a wharf built to handle large, heavy materials. 

Halifax Harbour has also handled some of the turbine parts, but Morykot said Sydney Harbour has the capacity to handle them easily.

He said the U.S. wind farms are using Canadian ports to receive materials from Europe, because the Jones Act in the U.S. prohibits foreign-flagged ships from moving goods between American ports.

But U.S. ships can pick up the parts in Canada and move them where needed.

Morykot said with offshore wind farms eventually heading for Atlantic Canadian waters, the business has a bright future.

Idea first pitched for municipal property

The Atlantic Canada Bulk Terminal is across Sydney Harbour from Cape Breton Regional Municipality's property that's long been identified as a potential site for a container terminal.

CBRM gave the exclusive right to a company called Novaporte to market the property and attract a shipping facility, but that hasn't happened, in part because of the lack of a functioning railway, according to the company.

Last year, Novaporte said it was pivoting and struck a deal with a Danish offshore wind turbine company to use part of the land as a marshalling yard. 

Last week, the provincial government cancelled a subsidy for the rail line in Cape Breton, saying it lacks a business case. 

No one from Novaporte was available for comment on how the lack of a rail subsidy and new competition might affect the company's plans.

Membertou First Nation is a major shareholder in Novaporte.

In an emailed statement, Chief Terry Paul said it's "encouraging" to see offshore wind turbine parts already being marshalled nearby "and further provides proof of the potential for Sydney Harbour within this 'new-to-our-region' industry."

He also said the rail subsidy is not necessary for Novaporte's offshore wind project, which is in its first phase of developing the CBRM land.

A container terminal is still in the plans for the second phase, Paul said.

"We're confident that down the road, as we develop our project into Phase 2, there will be opportunities to work with the current owners of the rail line in a positive and effective manner."

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