Eiffage Métal, a unit of French construction group Eiffage, has won a contract to fabricate 62 heavy components for a 496MW wind farm planned off the western Atlantic coast of France.

The components are “transition pieces”, steel structures rising under water from the seabed foundation to hold the turbine tower.

They are for the 62 turbines comprising the wind farm to be built near the Yeu and Noirmoutier islands off the Vendée department in the Pays de la Loire region.

Eiffage said each piece will be 29.5m in height, 6m in diameter, and will each weigh over 360 tonnes.

Parts of them will be manufactured at Eiffage subsidiary Smulders’s factory in Poland before being transported to Belgium for assembly. In a press release sent to GCR, Eiffage said production will start in spring 2023 for staged release starting in early 2024.

The €2bn wind farm is being developed by a consortium called Éoliennes en Mer Îles d’Yeu et de Noirmoutier, or EMYN. It comprises Engie, EDP Renováveis, Sumitomo Corporation, La Banque des Territoires, and Vendée Energie.

They say it will produce on average 1,900GWh of electricity a year, enough to supply some 800,000 people – more than the population of the Vendée department itself, Eiffage said.

It’s scheduled to start generating in 2025.