On 8 October, just before the fair, a conference organised in collaboration with Basque Trade & Investment was held at the Aberdeen Art Gallery. The event included presentations and networking activities with the participation of companies and institutions operating in Scotland.

During the event, Phil Stirling, offshore wind specialist at Scottish Development International (SDI), presented Scotland’s offshore wind energy capabilities and projects. Jane Watters of Innovate UK also discussed the business growth of marine renewables in Scotland. Ian McDonald, Supply Chain Development Manager at ScottishPower, spoke about supply chain development; and Gavin MacKay, Supply Chain Manager at Thistle Wind Partners, presented the company’s main projects and activities. Finally, Ignacio Pantojo of Iberdrola talked about the challenges, risks and opportunities of the industrialisation of floating wind energy. The following companies and entities attended on behalf of the Basque Country: BiMEP, DITREL, ESTEYCO, KIMUA, LIFTRA ,LUMIKER, NAUTILUS, NAVACEL, SAITEC, SENER, SLINGSINTT, TECNALIA and VICINAY.

We also got the chance to visit the facilities of Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult, a marine renewable energy research centre; and the facilities of Balmoral, a company specialising in buoyancy and protection solutions.

FOW24 took place on 9 and 10 October and the Basque Energy Cluster gave a presentation on the update of the situation of the offshore wind market in Spain, highlighting the capabilities of the Basque industry in the development of offshore wind energy worldwide.

The Basque Energy Cluster had a stand under the brand “Floating Wind Basque Country”, together with the companies KIMUA, VICINAY, SENER, LUMIKER, SLINGSINTT and SAITEC. The latest developments of two projects were presented at the stand: INTEGRIA “Investigation of structural INTEGRITY in floating wind turbines using Artificial Intelligence-based models” by the HAZITEK programme; and the EUROPEAN ELBE EUROCLUSTER project, which represents an alliance of eight European clusters in the field of Marine Renewable Energy.