{"id":11610,"date":"2026-02-13T08:40:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-13T08:40:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/11610\/"},"modified":"2026-02-13T08:40:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T08:40:09","slug":"shock-as-teesworks-loses-its-flagship-project","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/11610\/","title":{"rendered":"Shock as Teesworks loses its flagship project"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Teessiders received a shock today, 12 February, with news that Teesworks<\/a>\u2019 signature factory has lost its inaugural contract. Seah Wind<\/a> was working on the manufacture of monopiles (wind turbine bases) for the Hornsea 3<\/a> wind farm project. Hornsea 3 is the third of a series of offshore wind contracts, related to the wider Hornsea project<\/a>, 75 miles off the east coast of England. SeAH\u2019s involvement in Hornsea 3 has now been discontinued.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s all over<\/p>\n

Industry journal Renewable Energy News<\/a> (reNEWS) has confirmed that \u00d8rsted, the overall contract holder for the Hornsea 3 job, has agreed with SeAH that work on the wind farm bases will be discontinued. The revelation, by reNEWS editor Stephen Dunne, was contained in a subscriber-only article on 5 February 2026. It still hasn\u2019t been uploaded to reNEWS\u2019 website, and news hadn\u2019t filtered through to the Tees Valley until today.<\/p>\n

Why has this happened?<\/p>\n

I recently reported on production problems at the SeAH factory in South Bank. Back on 30 July 2025, the company announced that it had started work on base production. reNEWS is reporting that production difficulties started as soon as SeAH started to cut its first steel in the days following that July press release. Later in 2025, \u00d8rsted and SeAH discussed a reduction in the scope of the contract, but ultimately it wasn\u2019t possible to salvage the programme<\/p>\n

Industrial dispute<\/p>\n

The GMB Union has been in dispute with SeAH since October 2025. Production workers have been staging weekly one-day strikes. You can readhere<\/a> about my visit to the factory gate picket line. On 4 February 2026, I reached out to the SeAH press office to ask whether the industrial dispute had been settled. I\u2019m still waiting for a reply. Earlier this week, I spoke to the GMB\u2019s press office. It confirmed that it was still in dispute with SeAH, and said that \u201cthere is a big downturn due and waiting on work to start. We have a further meeting in 3 weeks\u201d. We now realise the scale of the downturn.<\/p>\n

Trouble at t\u2019mill<\/p>\n

Two days after the GMB\u2019s statement, on 10 February, Leigh Jones reported for the Teesside Lead<\/a> that SeAH had just appointed a new CEO. A company spokesman told Leigh, at the end of 2025, that Seah had \u201cnot delivered a single customer order,\u201d adding that delays to production mean the company has incurred \u201csubstantial operating costs\u201d and that it did not expect to reach what it called a \u201csustainable cash position\u201d until late 2026.\u201d<\/p>\n

So what happens now?<\/p>\n

In the immediate future, according to reNEWS, SeAH \u201dwill focus on the safe and reliable delivery of its secured order backlog through to 2027\u201d. This is a reference to the company\u2019s only remaining contract, a deal with German energy giant RWE to supply bases for its Norfolk Vanguard<\/a> wind farms. This contract was initially signed with Vattenfall, but it was subsequently sold on to RWE. Sources said that RWE will be monitoring developments. Rival fabricators will also keep an eye on the situation should it deteriorate further.<\/p>\n

A Spanish win<\/p>\n

In terms of the Hornsea 3 project, Haizea will be called upon to fulfil the entire contract. So all of the bases will be made in Spain. \u00d8rsted was prepared for such a contingency. It signed contracts with SeAH<\/a> and Haizea<\/a> for Hornsea 3 on the same day, 28 September 2022. The contracts didn\u2019t specify how many bases each company would make.<\/p>\n

A Mayor writes<\/p>\n

On 12 February 2026, the same day that the SeAH news broke on Teesside, Ben Houchen posted on social media about a delivery of six monopile bases to Steel River Quay<\/a>, also known as South Bank Quay. One of Houchen\u2019s posts, which you can see below, didn\u2019t mention that these bases had been made by Haizea in Bilbao, Spain. And, more importantly, it didn\u2019t mention that the neighbouring SeAH Factory wouldn\u2019t be making ANY bases for the Hornsea 3 offshore project.<\/p>\n

\"\"How it all started<\/p>\n

SeAH had originally made a Final Investment Decision (FID) to build its factory at the Able Marine Energy Park in Immingham on Humberside. This was announced<\/a> by then Business Minister Kwasi Kwarteng<\/a> on 7 July 2021. Seven months later, on 14 February 2022, came the infamous \u2018Love Hearts\u2019 photo-op<\/a>, featuring Ben Houchen and then local Redcar MP Jacob Young<\/a>. Picture courtesy of ITV Tyne Tees News<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"My word is my bond<\/p>\n

SeAH had, inexplicably, binned its Humberside FID, and signed one with Teesside instead. Despite numerous Freedom of Information requests<\/a>, there has never been a satisfactory explanation for this volte face, from either the company or HM Government. I expressed scepticism about the entire SeAH deal in September 2023. You can read that article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So who loses out here?<\/p>\n

Fast forward to February 2026. I reported on the vast profits being made<\/a> by the Teesworks Joint Venture (JV) partners, Chris Musgrave and Martin Corney<\/a>. Unsurprisingly, these men won\u2019t be on the hook for a penny if the SeAH project, and the accompanying South Bank Quay, go south. South Bank Quay was funded by the very first loan from the UK Investment Bank. The \u00a3107mn loan<\/a> was made to the Tees Valley Valley Combined Authority (TVCA)\u00a0 on 25 October 2021.<\/p>\n

This can\u2019t be right, surely?Teesworks exercised an option to buy the 90-acre land for the SeAH factor for \u00a396.79 plus VATIt simultaneously leased this land for 40 years to the TVCA for \u00a33.65mn a year.The TVCA leased it to SeAH for \u00a34.3mn a year.Teesworks then sold its income stream to Macquarie for \u00a393mn.Teesworks paid the STDC \u00a315mn of this cash in respect of a previous deal for the site.The public STDC, not the private Teesworks, paid \u00a351mn to remediate the SeAH land site.Teesworks then bought South Bank Quay for \u00a313.56 plus VAT.Teesworks will pass tonnage fees from the quay to the STDC, but only if it has made a profit on them.<\/p>\n

*Information courtesy of Private Eye magazine. Full details here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Funding the SeAH Factory<\/p>\n

A consortium of banks has loaned SeAH \u00a3590mn<\/a>. This lending is guaranteed 50\/50 by the UK and South Korean Governments, via their export guarantee departments. These are, respectively, UK Export Finance (UKEF) and the Korea Trade Insurance Corporation (K-Sure). In an unlikely worst-case scenario, an administration of the UK arm of SeAH<\/a> would result in a write-down in the value of the UK\u2019s 50% portion of the \u00a3590mn liability. In short, a loss of public cash.<\/p>\n

Think of a number. Any number<\/p>\n

At the outset, the SeAH contract was expected to cost \u00a3300mn<\/a>. Only one month later, in July 2022, inflation had already gripped the project, as the cost ballooned to \u00a3400mn<\/a>. By December of that year, the factory had burned through \u00a3450mn<\/a>. Within less than two years of this, the Northern Echo reported, in October 2024, that the cost had increased to \u00a3900mn<\/a>, treble its initial budget. Given recent events, the spend as at February 2026 has got to be in excess of \u00a31bn. The factory has generated zero income. SeAH doesn\u2019t have government guarantees for any cash spent in excess of the guaranteed \u00a3590mn loan.<\/p>\n

The TVCA has been approached for comment on this story.<\/p>\n

Thanks to James Waterson for providing additional research for this article<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Teessiders received a shock today, 12 February, with news that Teesworks\u2019 signature factory has lost its inaugural contract.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11611,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[285],"tags":[287],"class_list":{"0":"post-11610","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-orsted","8":"tag-orsted"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11610"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11610\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}