Bringing Offshore Wind Manufacturing Back to the UK

Summary

A new UK manufacturing facility for floating offshore wind needed more than technical ambition; it needed a credible, investable path to get there. NuPace partnered with Gabriel Engineering Group’s manufacturing arm, MidCal, to build that path from the ground up: a six-phase delivery programme that integrated existing work and stress-tested assumptions against the realities of UK manufacturing economics, giving potential investors a clear basis for commitment. Following this work, the client awarded NuPace the contract to deliver it.

The Challenge

A programme to establish a new UK manufacturing facility for floating offshore wind. The ambition was real, the feasibility funding was secured, and early technical work was already in motion.

What did not yet exist was a credible, investable plan, one that could demonstrate viability in the UK’s cost environment and give potential investors a clear basis for commitment.

NuPace designed the programme to do exactly that: test the real conditions, align product and facility decisions with what would actually work commercially, and build a foundation capable of supporting a £20M+ investment with confidence.

Solution Approach

The brief was to build the programme from the ground up: the inputs, thinking, development work, outputs, and decision gateways that would take this ambition from ideation through to the first production part off the line in a new facility. A complete path, structured for confidence at every stage.

Into that framework, the existing technical work would be integrated and tested, with assumptions examined against real-world manufacturing conditions and the realities of UK economics before they had the chance to harden into costly commitments.

NuPace, working in partnership with manufacturing SME MidCal, designed a six-phase programme framework built on New Product Introduction principles, with the weight of effort deliberately placed in the early phases: establish viability before capital was committed. Together, their experience in programme delivery and manufacturing facility establishment meant the framework was structured so that product, process, and facility decisions were developed in alignment, rather than on parallel tracks that would collide under cost pressure later.

Feasibility work that ignores today’s cost environment does not produce a feasible plan. It produces a plan that will need to be rebuilt once reality arrives. Where assumptions would not hold under scrutiny, they were identified and redirected early, toward automation, advanced manufacturing methods, and digital manufacturing approaches that actually change the economics of UK production.

What emerged was a programme built to carry a specific weight: investor confidence, supplier engagement, buyer relationships, facility delivery, and product introduction, all running simultaneously, all needing to hold together. Clear decision gateways were built throughout, giving the team a structured method for navigating that complexity at every stage. In a private-sector programme of this scale, there is no margin for decisions that drift or assumptions that go untested. The plan had to be investable from the outset.

Outcome and Impact

A £20M+ development programme gained a plan to build an investable foundation. That is what this phase was designed to produce, and that is what it delivered.
Product selection and factory design were both redirected before they became committed specifications. The early intervention prevented £200k in abortive costs. More significantly, it meant the capital that followed was building on ground that had been properly tested, not on assumptions that had never been challenged.

The client had what they needed: a delivery plan that could demonstrate viability in UK manufacturing conditions, built around the automation and advanced manufacturing methods that actually change the economics, not a plan that assumed the economics away.

Gabriel Engineering Group awarded NuPace the contract to build and lead the delivery team for Phases 1 and 2, taking the programme through to its final Feasibility Gate. From designing the foundation to delivering against it.