Offshore Construction Start

Offshore construction for the Sinclair INTOG floating offshore wind farm is currently planned to commence around 2029, in the late 2020s. The official Sinclair project website presents an indicative project timeline that shows “Construction commences” in the “Late 2020s,” following earlier development and design activities for the 99.5 MW floating wind project located about 58 km north of Fraserburgh and developed by Nadara under Crown Estate Scotland’s INTOG leasing round. A project presentation for Sinclair & Scaraben by the BlueFloat Energy / Renantis partnership further refines this schedule, aligning “Commencement of Construction” with the 2029 time band in its indicative timeline, with commercial operations targeted for the early 2030s. Together, these sources indicate a provisional offshore construction start window centred on 2029 rather than an exact fixed date. The same timelines show that this construction start is contingent on several preceding milestones. On the Sinclair website, scoping requests for all development areas are scheduled in 2024, consent applications in the mid‑2025 to mid‑2026 period, and consent decisions expected between mid‑2026 and mid‑2027, followed by detailed engineering design and procurement from mid‑2026 onward. The developer slide adds intermediate steps such as EIA design envelope definition, consent application, FEED and execution contract tendering, consents award, and financial close and completion of execution contracts prior to construction. These sequences underline that the 2029 offshore construction start is indicative and dependent on timely progress through permitting, engineering, contracting, and route‑to‑market processes. Once reached, this commencement of construction will mark Sinclair’s transition from early development into physical delivery offshore. It will be the phase in which the project’s proposed floating foundations and associated innovations, including new construction methodologies, mooring and inter-array cable connection–disconnection concepts, low‑carbon concrete approaches, and digital twin tools for construction and operations, begin to be deployed in practice. The developers intend to use Sinclair, alongside the adjacent Scaraben and Broadshore projects, as a platform to trial these technologies and maximise benefits for the Scottish supply chain during the construction phase. As the timelines are explicitly labelled as indicative and are subject to ongoing studies, grid coordination processes, and alternative routes to market, the 2029 construction start should be interpreted as a current planning assumption rather than a final, consented or contractually fixed date.