A Seabed Sweep, Not a Milestone: What GEOxyz's East Anglia Two Survey Actually Signals

ScottishPower Renewables has sent GEOxyz's 41.9 m survey vessel Geo Ocean IV to map roughly 218 km² of seabed around the planned turbine positions at East Anglia Two, about 46 km off the Suffolk coast, working round the clock with a hull-mounted multibeam echosounder to capture elevation, morphology and backscatter data. Adverse weather has pushed completion out to around 30 October, per the Notice to Mariners.

That is, on its own, a minor procurement event. But the survey sits at the tail end of a project that has already committed its heaviest industrial inputs, and its timing is a useful prompt to look at where East Anglia Two's real supply-chain leverage lies — in monopile steel, not in bathymetry.

What the survey is actually for

A geophysical sweep of this kind collects continuous, wide-swath sonar data across the array footprint. It does not characterise what the monopiles will be driven into; that is the job of later geotechnical work — cone penetration tests and boreholes at each foundation location. The geophysical pass instead produces the continuous surface dataset used for cable routing, boulder and debris identification, archaeological assessment and micro-siting of the 64 turbine positions.

The regulatory framing matters here. The East Anglia Two Development Consent Order imposes MMO-controlled requirements covering pre-construction geophysical surveys, archaeological investigations and reporting. The MMO varied the project's deemed marine licences (Schedules 13 and 14 of the 2022 Order) following a request received on 6 October 2025, with the variation taking effect on 17 March 2026. In other words, the survey is a consent condition being discharged, not a commercial decision.

On scale: 218 km² over roughly four weeks of 24-hour working is consistent with a single-vessel multibeam campaign in the southern North Sea, where autumn weather regularly forces exactly this kind of extension. The original notice anticipated a 20-day run from around 2 October; that slipped to 23 October and then to 30 October. Readers should treat the earlier dates as reported from search summaries of the KIS-ORCA notices rather than verified on the pages themselves.

The distance discrepancy is worth noting

Trade coverage of the survey places the site "around 46 km" off England's east coast. Siemens Gamesa's and Smulders' contract announcements both describe East Anglia Two as "almost 33 km" off the Suffolk coast.

My reading — inference, not fact — is that 33 km refers to the nearest array boundary or landfall proximity, while 46 km describes the array centre or the survey area's furthest extent. The two figures are not reconcilable from the published material, and anyone modelling cable lengths or transit times should work from the project's own coordinates rather than either press figure.

Where the tonnage sits

The genuinely consequential commitments for metals markets were made well before this survey:

The steel signal is the Sif award. It took Sif's firm 2026 order book to 210 kilotonnes — though that is the company's total contracted 2026 book, not East Anglia Two's share, which was already held under exclusive negotiation. The project-specific tonnage is not disclosed publicly; a 15 MW-class monopile in southern North Sea conditions typically runs in the low thousands of tonnes each, which would put the array's monopile requirement in the region of 100–150 kt. That is my estimate, not a reported figure.

What is reported and matters: monopile fabrication starts at Maasvlakte 2 in the second half of 2026 — i.e. now — which makes the 2027 offshore start a schedule question for Dutch and Belgian yards, not for survey contractors.

One specification point readers will trip over

The turbine model is the SG 14-236 DD, a 14 MW platform with a 236 m rotor and 115 m blades. Cadeler's release refers to "64 x 15 MW" turbines. These are not contradictory: 64 × 15 MW = 960 MW, exactly the stated project capacity, whereas 64 × 14 MW would give 896 MW. The 960 MW nameplate therefore implies an upsized operating rating of 15 MW per unit — consistent with the rating envelope of the DD variant. Analysts comparing nameplate capacity against turbine counts across projects should use 15 MW here.

What to watch

• Financial close. As of August 2026 East Anglia Two had not publicly announced financial close, despite ScottishPower describing the project as under construction. Offshore installation contracts are firm, but the financing milestone is worth tracking separately from physical progress — and should not be conflated with East Anglia Three, which closed a £3.6 bn package in July 2025.
• Maasvlakte 2 output. Whether Sif's H2 2026 monopile start holds is the single best indicator of whether the 2027 installation window is realistic.
• The export cable ducts. ScottishPower has completed two ducts beneath the Suffolk coastline; onshore works proceeding ahead of offshore installation is a normal sequencing choice, not a signal of acceleration.

The survey will finish in days. The steel will take two years.