UK’s Crown Estate has distributed the first funds from the £50m ($63.7m) Supply Chain Accelerator to 13 organisations across England, Wales, and Scotland. The Accelerator fund was established to accelerate and de-risk the early-stage development of projects linked to offshore wind and the UK’s domestic supply chain. The first £5m from the fund will be matched by funding from the Crown Estate and will invest over £9m which, if the opportunities successfully conclude their respective development stages, could lead to more than £400m of capital investment. Projects receiving funding include those enabling floating wind platforms, anchoring and mooring systems, operations and maintenance facilities, test facilities, and those supporting the skills transition. In early 2024, The Crown Estate published the Celtic Sea Blueprint which predicted that 5,300 jobs and a £1.4bn economic boost could be generated through deploying the first floating offshore wind capacity, resulting from the current Leasing Round 5 process, in the waters off South Wales and South-West England. The research highlighted a number of opportunities for supply chain development essential for the deployment of these floating wind farms, including floating platform components; dynamic cables and connections; wet storage infrastructure and facilities; operations and management infrastructure and facilities; and skills transition facilities. Successful projects were rigorously evaluated and selected based on a number of criteria, one of which was their ability to deliver on the requirements of the Celtic Sea Blueprint. This was the initial round of funding allocated by The Crown Estate to address some of these opportunities with a further £45m earmarked for future rounds that could potentially be deployed to support further projects around the UK that meet the opportunities identified by the Industrial Growth Plan for the offshore wind sector. Organisations which will receive funding through the Crown Estate’s Supply Chain Accelerator are Blue Abyss Operations, Celtic Sea Power, Gabriel Engineering, HR Wallingford, Hutchinson Engineering, Marine Power Systems, Nerth, Plaswire, Tardra and Tugdock. Subject to receiving a contract, funds will also be awarded to the Neath Port Talbot Group of Colleges, Pembrokeshire College, and Plymouth & South Devon Freeport. googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-1_95_0_1_2'); }); TagsOffshore Wind United Kingdom