Offshore wind supply chain company Nexans still bullish on US market

While the US offshore wind industry crumbles under President Donald Trump’s relentless assault, French cable manufacturer Nexans remains confident that underlying power demand trends will uplift both the domestic and global markets.

“There's a huge potential still in offshore wind, which should be tapped into, both from a power generation point of view, but also from a job creation point of view,” said Pascal Radue, Nexans' executive vice president for generation and transmission.

Nexans currently has the only subsea cable manufacturing facility in the US, located in Charleston, South Carolina.

US sector

From this plant, it has already provided the 138kV high voltage alternating current (HVAC) cable to Orsted’s South Fork array operating east of Montauk, New York.

It is likewise supplying high voltage subsea cables for Orsted’s Revolution Wind project split between Connecticut and Rhode Island.

The US projects “are all progressing according to schedule, with ups and downs, as all of these big infrastructure projects have,” he said.

“It's not doom and gloom in terms of getting those projects over the line,” he added.

US offshore wind has seen quite a bit of malaise over the past few years, with many projects falling out due to spiraling inflation and financing costs.

Donald Trump’s rise to the presidency was an even bigger blow, and his anti-wind executive order derailed most remaining projects.

This industry turmoil then took out investments potentially worth billions of dollars in supply chain, most notably German steel fabricator EEW’s monopile plant in Paulsboro, New Jersey, as well as Italian cable maker Prysmian's proposed investment in Massachusetts.

Global markets

Nexans plant, however, remains booked through the end of the decade, Radue said, largely on European orders.

The South Carolina provided cables to SSE Renewables/TotalEnergies’ Seagreen and Ocean Winds’ Moray West arrays, both in Scotland, with further orders in the books despite Trump’s tariff war with the continent.

US exports to Europe face 25% tariffs that may rise even higher if trade deals are not made by Trump’s 9 July deadline.

Yet, Radue remains sanguine. “We have impacts, but they're not of a magnitude which is prohibitive in doing business in a profitable way,” he said.

Tariff impact

“It can be painful, but it's a hiccup in that journey,” he added. “We are all aiming to have successful businesses, and that's the overall aim, and that will normalize any kind of extreme drives sooner or later.”

The manufacturer began producing high-voltage subterranean electric cables in South Carolina in 2014 before expanding into subsea cables, with production beginning in 2021.

It then further expanded into high voltage direct current (HVDC) subsea cables and is now capable of producing 525kV lines for the global market, cutting edge for the industry.

This early investment has given it a leg up on the competition as demand has surged, driven both by a need to decarbonise energy but also increased electrification and overall power needs.

“We've been very early in that investment cycle, and I think we now able to bear the fruits of that investment,” he said.

“We have the necessary plants, we have the ships that we need to execute the projects that we select that are good projects.”

Radue doesn’t see future capacity investments in the US, however, despite the success of the Charleston plant.

“If we do invest further, then we would look for opportunities where some of the investments would be somehow financed. And also, we'd need to have a clear offtake agreement with whoever wants to invest,” he said.

“We believe that both diversification and renewable energy is a fundamental driver of our markets,” he said. “I think at some point this will be applicable to the US as well, in a in a more prominent way than it may be at the moment, but it's something which I don't think will go away.”