SEASIGHT SOLUTIONS: Built for the Big Lift
At Seasight Solutions a full suite of services backs a highly impressive product range that is tried and tested globally. Seasight Solutions CEO, Thomas Halkjær Kristensen, tells Energy Focus that the company is perfectly positioned for ongoing growth, bringing quality and innovation like few others.
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A wind turbine blade can now stretch beyond 120m, longer than a football pitch, and every one of them has to be carried, lifted and held steady somewhere between a hard stand and a hub high above the ground. The equipment that does that work seldom makes headlines, yet the whole wind industry leans on it. In the Danish harbour town of Hvide Sande, on a narrow strip of land between the North Sea and Ringkøbing Fjord, Seasight Solutions has spent three decades building it.
The story starts at Hvide Sande Shipyard, a family yard that opened in 1950 to repair fishing boats and later moved into aluminium vessels for the wind industry. From that yard grew a group of four companies, Hvide Sande Shipyard, Hvide Sande Agency and Supply, Seasight Solutions and Seasight Davits, working side by side.
“We had our first order from the wind industry back in the early 90s. We have been a part of the wind industry since blades were being transported in containers. Now, the latest tools we have delivered are carrying blades of 115m and generators of more than 400 tonnes,” says Thomas Halkjær Kristensen, CEO of Seasight Solutions. “Our core markets are the wind industry and the defence industry.”
Those decades have seen the industry grow into a continental employer. Menon Economics estimates that European offshore wind supported about 180,000 full-time jobs and roughly €26 billion in gross value added in 2025, with each direct job supporting around two more in the supply chain.
Seasight Solutions began as a supplier of transport and lifting equipment and now works as an EPCI contractor, handling engineering, procurement, construction and installation. “Today, we can deliver the complete package from first idea through engineering, production, sourcing and installation, as well as servicing the tools,” says Kristensen. “We can also step into whatever part of that process that our customers need. If they only require construction, we can facilitate that too.
“When I started in 1994, I was a ship carpenter. Over time, I moved from the factory to the office and then into design,” says Kristensen. “Today, we have more than 110 white collar staff and around 270 people altogether. We have achieved fast growth in the team and in the turnover.”
PRODUCT OWNERS
A company that builds to other people’s drawings depends on other people’s order books. Owning the product changes that position. “15 years ago, we made a strategic decision to move from just being a supplier to being a product owner. We started Seasight Davits which produces davit cranes for offshore wind farms to ensure that we are diversified. We now have 3250 cranes installed offshore across the globe,” says Kristensen.
The second big product took the problem of wind head on. Blades have traditionally been steadied with manually held ropes called taglines, and a gust can stop a lift. The Autonomous Positioning System (APS), which was developed in collaboration with Vestas, replaces the taglines with propellers that counteract wind loads on the blades. This provides stability in stronger winds and increases the weather window by up to 30%. “In 2018, we were ready to develop the next big product which was an Autonomous Positioning System and we sold the first system in 2019. Today, we have more than 250 systems in the market across almost all of the big OEMs including Vestas, Nordex, Enercon, etc. Developers are also starting to use the product for offshore servicing needs,” says Kristensen.
Offshore, the logistics are even less forgiving. Installation vessels often carry blades crosswise, with more than half of each blade overhanging the deck, and their main cranes, rated up to 2,600 t, are a heavy tool for a lift of less than 100 t. The new tools are shaped by those constraints. “At Hamburg Wind Energy, we launched our Mk 2 APS. It is twice as strong as the previous system and is perfect as the market continues to evolve. Onshore, blades are getting bigger and so the new machine has more power. Now we have two models for different types of blades and on top of that, we have launched our new Titan X davit crane. It is a fixed boom crane and joins our portfolio alongside the Hercules crane,” says Kristensen.
“We see in the market a gap for a larger fixed boom crane. The Titan is one ton up to five meters outreach. The new Titan X is three tons up to eight meters and one tonne up to 10 meters,” he explains. “We have also launched two other products – the Seasight Blade Tool (SBT) for the installation of wind turbine blades up to 29 tons and the Seasight Multi Lifting Tool (SMLT) for installation of nacelles and drive trains etc.”
Behind the catalogue sits a workshop that keeps control close. “We have our own automation department, and we develop most of our electrical cabinets and software ourselves. We do outsource the surface protection, including hot dip galvanizing and dry film painting to ensure longevity,” says Kristensen. “We produce around 600 cranes each year, and each has an electrical motor.” Volume of that order makes every component count. “Davit cranes and APS systems are the backbone of the company. All the EPCI services are very important, and they complement our own products perfectly.”
GLOBAL REACH
That many machines need people who understand them, and Seasight builds its own knowledge base. “We have a KPI that 10% of all employees should be either an apprentice or on some sort of education programme. It is very important for us to grow our own skilled team,” says Kristensen.
Capacity is the next frontier. Danish Offshore Industry has noted that price pressure is moving down the supply chain, and Seasight has answered by taking a direct stake in its steel supply. “This year, we have purchased part of a company in Vietnam – Huy Minh Corporation. We did that as we have seen growth in the company and we have also seen pressure on prices, especially on tools going out of Europe,” says Kristensen.
The business sits near Ho Chi Minh City, a region long associated with large steel structures for the oil and gas industry. “There is high quality and the business is used to the necessary scale of documentation. We have worked together with Huy Minh for more than five years,” Kristensen says. “We can now source most of the steel and aluminium needed for projects in Asia through our own operation in Vietnam.”
Originating from a fishing-boat yard on the Danish coast, Seasight Solutions has grown in step with the wind industry it has served for over three decades. Developers keep turning to offshore wind as a solution, and each new generation of turbine asks more of the people who move, lift and install it. With quality controlled at the workshop, steel supply secured in Vietnam, a young workforce coming through the ranks and new tools heading to market, Seasight Solutions is ready for the next generation of blades.