FFS wants more cable coiling in Farsund

Text and photo: Sveinung W. Jensen, Tellus Kommunikasjon

- This is an exciting assignment. This could be a new business area for us in the future, says FFS CEO John W. Nilsen.

The cable is manufactured by Nexans, which is a world leader in high-voltage submarine cables and is based in Halden. As "Seven Arctic" is too big to get to Halden, the cable was transported to Farsund on a barge.

Operations manager at FFS, Leif Steinar Simonsen, takes us on board both ship and barge. From the barge, we can see that the yellow cable is slowly being coiled onto the ship. The cable has a length that corresponds to the road distance between Farsund and Grimstad.

- IT CONSISTS OF a power cable, six fiber cables and an empty pipe, says Dag Holmen, who is a project engineer at Nexans.

The cable manufacturer has ten workers in place in Farsund to see that the process goes as it should.

- For now, we are on track. We coil around 12,000 meters per day, says Holmen from the operations barracks which are rigged on the barge.

 "SEVEN ARCTIC" is 162.3 meters long and 32 meters wide, and was built in 2017 with a dead weight of 13,574 tonnes. The vessel will remain in Farsund for around one month, before it heads south to the Black Sea, where the cable will be laid outside Turkey.

FFS assists the ship and the operation with what is needed.

- We have probably 10-15 people from FFS working on the project directly. In addition, we will hire scaffolders, mechanics, tilers and other local subcontractors. Then you have all the supplies for the ship and hotel accommodation. This will have a positive effect for the entire region, says Nilsen.

THE GENERAL MANAGER of Listerhavnen IKS, Tom Egil Ravndal, hopes that Farsund has found a new niche.

- When it becomes known that such projects can be handled here, there may be more to come. It is important both financially for the port, but also for the other businesses in the area, he tells the local newspaper Lister24.