Turning a long-standing floating wind concept into an investment case

Overview

An earlier feasibility phase explored the opportunity for a new UK manufacturing facility supporting floating offshore wind. The next stage needed to bring the manufacturing proposition together with market analysis, commercial strategy and financial modelling, and establish whether the facility could stand up as an investment. 

What was at stake was a new UK manufacturing capability, and the chance to keep more of the value floating offshore wind could create at home. 

The Challenge

Keeping that value depended on the facility being competitive, which meant looking beyond conventional manufacturing methods. A new facility would need to contend with high labour and energy costs, inflation and the cost of capital, and strong competition for specialist manufacturing skills, while established international supply chains already served the sector. On those terms, most would have written it off as an idea before spending anything on understanding whether it could work. 

Technical feasibility was therefore only the starting point. The harder test was whether the facility could generate returns strong enough to attract investment. The decisions that would determine that were tightly connected: manufacturing methods shaped facility size, workforce and operating costs; market timing set when revenue would need to arrive; and supply-chain choices drove the cost base. Each of them fed directly into the investment requirement and the returns an investor would see. 

NuPace’s Approach

NuPace set the direction from the outset, and its first priority was building shared clarity on what an investor would need to see and on the purpose behind it all: making UK manufacturing possible in the current economic landscape. The work was structured as the opening phase of the programme NuPace designed to bring the facility into operation, rather than as a standalone project, with its interdependent decisions worked through as one: as new evidence emerged, its implications were traced through every workstream and into the investment case. Framing it that way meant the output covered the full outcomes the client was looking for, and left them clear on where they needed to move to next. Had it been approached as a standalone project, or without taking the delivery environment into account, it would most likely have failed.  

To examine the proposition as a whole, NuPace assembled six specialists across manufacturing engineering, technical and project leadership, commercial, and investment and finance, and directed them as a single team. With the people who held the evidence and specialist knowledge directly involved in each decision, effort stayed focused on the questions that would decide the investment, and progress did not depend on information being passed between separate teams. 

The team established a conventional manufacturing baseline, then tested how a clean-sheet advanced manufacturing approach could change the proposition. The work was grounded in industry evidence: the team engaged with technology providers and suppliers, benchmarked manufacturing approaches, and obtained real quotations to strengthen key assumptions in the cost model. 

That joined-up approach surfaced a significant commercial issue early: the timing of the core floating wind market did not fully align with the point at which investment in the facility would need to be made. The team identified bridging markets requiring similar manufacturing capability, giving the programme a potential route to earlier utilisation and revenue while the core market develops. 

NuPace then pulled each strand into a single investment case. Market analysis and commercial strategy sat alongside an integrated financial model, developed with the client’s own financial expertise, covering investment requirements, product costs, operating economics and potential EBITDA and investment returns. 

Outcome and Impact

In five months, a concept that had been under consideration for several years became a credible, investable opportunity, with a structured pathway into its next stage of development. The resulting investment case underpins a total investment target of c.£30m, split into smaller funding rounds. 

The advanced manufacturing model pointed to a smaller facility, with the workforce requirement coming down from around 100 to around 45, and weighted towards more highly skilled roles. That strengthened both the operating case and the value of the jobs the facility could create, at a time when those skills are in high demand. 

Key cost assumptions were backed by real supplier evidence, and a response to the market-timing issue was developed before any major capital was committed. Within the engagement, the first phase of the manufacturing development framework was completed and the second taken to around 85%, up to a planned stage gate where the programme pauses for its funding to arrive. 

The facility had a clear route forward, and the evidence to back it.