DAJIN OFFSHORE: Turnkey Building Europe’s Energy Future
As the European energy mix continues to shift, offshore wind is accepted and hailed as an important part of the transition process. But Europe alone cannot drive change at the rate required. Global suppliers including world leaders like Dajin Offshore continue to fuel progress through the delivery of turnkey heavy infrastructure projects. Senior VP, Peter Li, talks to Energy Focus about growing a powerhouse business in China, dedicated to European decarbonisation.
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Interview with Peter Li, Senior VP
Monopiles and transition pieces built on China’s Bohai Bay coastline now increasingly find their way into wind farms across the North Sea. Dajin Offshore has spent two full decades turning steel into the backbone of Europe’s clean power transition, and under Senior Vice President Peter Li, the company is pushing further than manufacturing alone, building the ships that will carry its products to site and, eventually, install them there too.
Dajin was founded by Chairman Jin Xin in 2003, listing on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange in 2010 and recently completed an initial public offering in Hong Kong. When founded, the company mainly manufactured steel structures for thermal power projects but subsequently moved in the wind energy space. “We started out as one of the first companies to provide wind towers to companies like Vestas and Siemens Gamesa and GE,” Li says. China’s own offshore ambitions were still years away. “At that time, there was no offshore projects in China, only onshore. At Penglai, we have an open port and a lot of equipment from European suppliers. The facility is well suited for manufacturing offshore components, and we manufactured the very first Chinese monopile.”
That early bet on offshore capability opened the door to Europe. “In 2019, we expanded the business to Europe with several clients, including Orsted and Oceans Wind, coming to our facility and we obtained our first order, for Moray West, in 2022,” Li explains.
The timing brought its own complications. “At that time, it was very challenging because of Covid-19. We overcame the main challenges, and we delivered for that project on time, with good quality, and the client was very happy. They placed a second order and we then started another relationship with a very good client, RWE, and we obtained the Thor and Nordseecluster projects.”
Iberdrola and several other major developers have since joined that client list, all supplied from a business Li describes as having deliberately narrowed its focus. “Since 2022, we have gained both domestic and European projects but that was challenging because of the differing standards and requirements. Our Chairman decided to focus on European projects and we are now 100% focused on Europe. Both our facilities are Penglai and Tangshan are working 100% on export projects.”
More than 2,000 people now work across Dajin’s offshore business, with over 70 based locally in Europe
FULL RANGE
Today that focus spans the entire steel component range an offshore wind farm requires. “Our product range covers all components for offshore projects. From foundations, monopiles and transition pieces to jackets and towers – all steel components are manufactured here,” Li says.
Five facilities now support that output, three of them dedicated to offshore work, feeding live European projects directly from the Penglai site. “We are working for several European projects, and we are delivering for Moray West, Thor and others from the Penglai facility.”
As turbines have moved farther from shore, the product range has kept pace. “Offshore projects are very challenging and when the projects got into deeper water, we expanded to provide different products. We have continued to expand to supply floating foundations which are more complex and challenging products that require different components,” Li notes, crediting a dedicated Hamburg team for managing the added complexity.
“We have a great team in Hamburg that is in charge of supply chain, and this is a reason we want more scope. We can now offer a turnkey solution to developers and that is very appealing.”
Beyond full-spectrum manufacturing and integrated supply chain support, Dajin also differentiates itself through strict sustainability governance and rigorous site safety standards.
SUSTAINABILITY & SAFETY
Sustainability and workplace safety form the core competitive differentiators that set Dajin apart from pure-play fabrication and shipping businesses. The company has set clear decarbonisation targets: a 42% reduction in Scope 1 and Scope 2 carbon emissions by 2030. As a member of the Responsible Steel initiative, Dajin adheres strictly to global green steel production standards. Most recently, Dajin Offshore officially joined the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC) – where Dajin’s GM for floating offshore, Carlos Martin, has been elected as a board member – contributing actively to the development of industry-wide ESG standards and supporting the global scaling of clean energy. The company has also outlined a roadmap to power 100% of its manufacturing operations with renewable energy by 2035.
Workplace safety remains a non-negotiable operational baseline across all production sites. To date, Dajin’s offshore wind manufacturing bases have accumulated more than 10 million working hours without a single Lost Time Incident (LTI), a safety record underpinned by rigorous on-site management systems and comprehensive employee protection mechanisms.
Dajin’s newest addition to its workplace footprint, a manufacturing complex in Tangshan, has moved from ceremony to production in under a year. “We recently had an opening ceremony where we invited many clients from Europe. For this facility, we have already started operations for half a year and we have achieved capacity. From here, we again provide our capacity to the European market,” Li says.
The site has since become home to a landmark project: China’s first DNV-certified three-legged jacket, engineered for 15MW turbines and built to withstand impact resistance down to minus 60 degrees Celsius, well beyond the domestic industry standard. “It will be the largest and most modern facilities in the world,” Li says of Tangshan’s scale.
BUILDING THE FLEET
Manufacturing capacity alone was never realistically going to be enough to meet the company’s broader ambition. “At the end of 2022, because we were delivering these European projects, we recognised a bottleneck around transportation, so the Chairman decided to invest in shipbuilding and acquired the Panjin facility,” Li explains.
That decision has already produced results on the water. Two KING-series deck carriers have launched from Panjin this year, the second of them, KING TWO, a 40,000-tonne vessel measuring almost 240 metres, with a third due to enter service within the year. “We have used our vessels to transport to the UK and back to China,” Li says.
The ambition extends well beyond those first three ships. “We are keen to launch more vessels again this year, and our plan is to invest in transportation vessels. The shipyard will also allow us to expand our business scope to installation vessels so that we can contribute, as a local partner, to offshore projects.”
That installation ambition has now moved from strategy into formal partnership. Dajin has signed a Letter of Intent with a major European offshore wind farm owner-operator to explore joint development of installation vessel solutions, aligning on specifications, construction timelines and operating models as the industry searches for capacity beyond 3,500 tonnes that few existing vessels can offer. It is the clearest signal yet of Li’s turnkey ambition taking physical shape: manufacturing, transportation, marshalling and installation, delivered by one supplier from a single relationship.
Progress on the manufacturing side continues in parallel. Dajin has begun cutting steel for the 900MW Nordseecluster B project in the German North Sea, an RWE and Norges Bank Investment Management development, having already delivered all 45 monopiles for the adjacent Nordseecluster A phase.
Behind the hardware, Li points to something less visible but, in his view, just as decisive. He joined Dajin seven years ago after roles at Orsted and Vestas, building its European commercial function from a team of one to more than 70; all skills that a developer actually needs.
That team now spans ten nationalities, something Li treats as core to the culture rather than incidental to it. “In Dajin, there is a culture of respect.” The wider business operates on a similar principle. “We are very proud of what we call our ‘cultural beauty’ where everyone thinks and works differently,” he adds, describing annual workshops built around sharing ideas across the organisation. Ownership sits at the centre of it and Li highlights this as one of the company’s core values: “I only win when we all win.”
EUROPE LEANS IN
Dajin’s expansion is landing at a moment when Europe’s collective offshore ambitions are hardening rapidly into firm commitments. In January 2026, energy ministers from nine European nations signed the Hamburg Declaration at the North Sea Summit, agreeing for the first time to deliver 100GW of offshore wind through joint cross-border projects, part of a wider goal of 300GW around the North Sea by 2050. WindEurope now expects the continent’s installed offshore capacity to reach 73GW by 2030, with annual installations climbing toward 15GW a year through the following decade, even as grid bottlenecks, permitting delays and cautious auction design continue to slow individual projects. Globally, GWEC’s most recent figures put installed offshore capacity at 83GW, with governments awarding a record 56GW of new capacity through auctions in a single year and annual installations forecast to more than quadruple by 2030.
For a company that entered offshore manufacturing only a decade ago, that trajectory is the opportunity Li has been building toward. “In the future, we want to be known as a comprehensive solutions provider for the industry,” he says, describing an ambition that now stretches from vertically integrated steel production through to vessels carrying Dajin-built components around the world. With Tangshan running at capacity, a growing fleet on the water, and formal partnerships now extending into installation, Dajin’s next chapter looks set to be written increasingly on European waters rather than only in Chinese yards.