Menck secures contract with DEME for high-volume grouted connections

Menck*, Acteon's Marine Foundations business line, has been contracted by DEME to provide large-volume grouted connections on the Noirmoutier offshore wind farm.  

The project is located 16.5 km offshore Noirmoutier Island in the Bay of Biscay, France. The scope includes 61 turbines with drilled and grouted monopile foundations, fixed to the seabed by grouted rock socket connections.  

Menck has supplied two planetary pan mixers and pumps, along with a 500-tonne grout capacity in silos. The company is achieving efficient grout pours at a rate of 100 m³ per hour, with some individual pile annulus nominal volumes exceeding 500 m³.  

Work commenced in summer 2024 and is ongoing.

“The Noirmoutier project poses interesting challenges due to the large grout volumes required for the drilled rock socket annuli. Menck was well-positioned to execute the project, given our prior experience with the similar Saint Nazaire offshore wind project. For Noirmoutier, we made several improvements to our existing equipment to further increase output, improve redundancy, ease maintenance, and effectively reduce labour requirements. The equipment also demonstrated its capability to grout large volumes, with an unexpected 500 m³ grout pour completed due to grout losses to the rock formation,” said Stephen Rourke, Operations Manager at Menck.

"DEME and Acteon’s grouting company, Menck, have successfully completed over 50% of the marine foundation installations for the Noirmoutier Offshore Wind Farm. The project benefits from seamless collaboration, utilising Acteon’s advanced grouting installation machine, currently the fastest on the market, with proven reliability and efficient operations” said Guillaume Fallourd, Project Manager from DEME. 

*originally contracted through LDD