VolkerInfra and VSMC joint venture

The VolkerInfra and VSMC joint venture is a specialist collaboration between VolkerWessels group companies VolkerInfra and Visser & Smit Marine Contracting (VSMC), formed to deliver complex high‑voltage subsea and near‑shore power cable projects. The venture combines VolkerInfra’s civil, trenchless and landfall engineering capabilities with VSMC’s subsea cable installation expertise, specialist divers and marine installation vessels. The joint venture is active in the UK power and offshore wind sectors, undertaking work for utilities and offshore wind developers. It delivered the deep seabed replacement of one of three 132 kV subsea cables under the Solent supplying the Isle of Wight, a €17.5 million project for Scottish and Southern Energy that involved a 930 metre horizontal directional drill from Thorness Bay, manufacture and installation of more than 5,600 metres of extra‑high‑voltage cable weighing 600 tonnes, subsea burial and final testing and commissioning. The same collaboration has been used on export cable landfall works such as Walney 1, where VolkerInfra, VSMC and Visser & Smit Hanab coordinated intertidal and near‑shore operations to pull high‑voltage submarine cables ashore at Heysham under challenging tidal conditions and existing cable crossings, working in close sequence with VSMC’s cable lay vessel Stemat Spirit. Beyond individual landfall projects, the VolkerInfra and VSMC partnership underpins larger offshore wind export and inter‑array cabling scopes, such as at the Dudgeon Offshore Wind Farm, where VSMC was contracted to install submarine export and inter‑array cables while VolkerInfra designed, installed and connected the offshore and onshore substations. Through these projects the joint venture provides integrated engineering, installation and commissioning of subsea power links from offshore assets to the onshore grid.