EnBW's Dreekant offshore wind farm is not yet a construction project. It is a 1 GW site in the German North Sea where the developer has started spending real engineering money — and where the decisions that will eventually generate hundreds of thousands of tonnes of steel demand have not yet been made.
That distinction matters. The September 2026 award of foundation engineering work to London-based SLPE confirms that EnBW is designing, not yet procuring steel. The project has no confirmed turbine count, no confirmed foundation type and no confirmed fabrication or installation contractor.
What Is Actually Confirmed
EnBW secured development rights for the Dreekant site in June 2024. The site is in the German North Sea; the project is generally described as a 1 GW development.
Three engineering events are on the record:
| Date | Event | Detail |
|---|---|---|
| June 2024 | Development rights secured | EnBW acquires the Dreekant site |
| November 2024 | JBO appointments | Jörss-Blunck-Ordemann awarded geotechnical work and pre-FEED design |
| September 2026 | SLPE appointment | Concept, FEED and detailed engineering of wind turbine foundations, plus fabrication, installation and commissioning support |
That is a conventional engineering progression: site investigation and a first pass at the design, then a formal front-end engineering phase run by a specialist structural designer. SLPE's scope — concept through detailed design and into fabrication support — is the same package that design houses such as SLPE and its peers have carried on other German and European offshore wind projects.
What is not on the record is equally important. There is no disclosed EPC or EPCI contractor, no turbine supplier, no foundation type, no turbine count, no approval-application date, and no final investment decision date.
The Capex Problem Sitting Underneath the Engineering
The single most useful piece of context for anyone tracking Dreekant is EnBW's own position on offshore wind spending.
In early 2025, EnBW announced it was subjecting its offshore wind activities to a significant cost review, citing the impact of inflation and interest rates on capital costs. The company made clear that it would not automatically proceed with every project in its pipeline at previously assumed economics, and that partnership models could be used to share risk on major developments.
The Dreekant engineering awards should be read against that backdrop. Spending money on FEED and geotechnical work is not the same as committing capital to construction. It is the step you take when you need a much better cost estimate before you can decide whether to build.
That is why the widely cited expectation of a 2029 final investment decision for Dreekant should be treated as an ambition rather than a fixed date. The engineering contracts now in place are precisely the work that will determine whether that FID happens on schedule or moves.
Why the Foundation Choice Is the Whole Ballgame for Steel
For steel suppliers, the variable that matters most on Dreekant is the foundation type, and it is genuinely undecided.
German North Sea sites in this generation of projects are typically characterised by water depths in the range of roughly 30 to 40 metres and their distance from shore, which tends to push designs toward large monopiles or toward jacket substructures. Both are steel-intensive, but they are not equivalent businesses for a mill or a fabricator:
| Foundation route | Typical steel implications | Typical fabrication and installation profile |
|---|---|---|
| XL monopiles | Very heavy plate, thick-wall, single large unit per turbine | Requires large-diameter monopile rolling capacity and very large installation vessels |
| Jackets | Tubular sections and complex node fabrication, multiple braced legs per turbine | More fabrication hours and yards, more complex weld procedures, heavier logistics |
| Suction buckets or alternatives | Lower steel mass per foundation, different plate and tubular product mix | Depends on soil conditions and design maturity; less established at this scale in the German North Sea |
Because the turbine count has not been disclosed, total steel tonnage cannot be estimated with any confidence. A 1 GW development at current turbine ratings would imply a double-digit number of very large machines rather than a large number of small ones, but the arithmetic swings substantially depending on whether EnBW selects, for example, 15 MW or 18 MW class turbines. Without the count and the foundation type, tonnage estimates are speculation.
This is the stage at which steel producers and fabricators should be watching, not later. Foundation design choices are effectively locked in during FEED and detailed design. Once SLPE's design is frozen, the steel specification — plate thicknesses, steel grades, weldability requirements, corrosion protection assumptions — becomes largely fixed, and the opportunity to influence it has passed.
The German Offshore Wind Context
Dreekant is one of several German North Sea projects moving through the pipeline in the same window. The distinguishing feature of this cohort is not technology — it is cost pressure. The German offshore wind sector has had to absorb the same inflation and financing shock that hit the rest of Europe, and developers have responded by re-examining project economics, delaying FIDs and, in some cases, restructuring ownership and partnership arrangements.
EnBW itself has signalled openness to bringing partners into offshore projects as a way to manage capital exposure, and has cited the need to keep offshore wind within acceptable return thresholds. That makes Dreekant a candidate for a partnership or farm-down structure at some point before construction, though no such transaction has been announced.
The engineering appointments in 2024 and 2026 show the project is alive and being de-risked. They do not show it is funded for construction.
What to Watch Next
The signals that would materially change the outlook for Dreekant, in rough order of importance:
- A final investment decision, or a formal slippage of the expected date. This is the gate that determines whether any steel is ever ordered.
- Foundation type selection. A monopile outcome concentrates demand in a small number of very large fabrication yards and heavy-plate mills. A jacket outcome spreads demand across more yards and tilts the product mix toward tubulars and complex fabricated nodes.
- Turbine count and rating. Announced alongside the turbine supply agreement, this converts the 1 GW headline into an actual tonnage range.
- EPCI contract award. The EPCI contractor, once named, will drive the fabrication and installation supply chain, including which steel mills and fabrication yards are qualified.
- Approval application submission. The German approval process for offshore installations, run through the Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency (BSH), is a prerequisite milestone; its submission timing is a useful indicator of development pace.
- Partner or equity transaction. An EnBW farm-down would improve the probability of the project reaching construction and would bring additional balance sheets into the capex decision.
Assessing Dreekant Today
The honest assessment is that Dreekant is a credible 1 GW development in a market that knows how to build offshore wind, but it sits at a stage where almost all of the commercially significant decisions are still ahead of it. The engineering chain is now properly staffed — JBO for geotechnical and pre-FEED, SLPE for concept through detailed foundation design and fabrication support — which is what a developer does when it intends to take a project forward but has not yet committed to build.
For the steel supply chain, the practical implication is to monitor rather than chase. There is no tonnage to bid for, no fabricator selected and no installation contractor appointed. But the design window now opening is precisely when foundation specifications get set, and the companies that engage with the design process early — through SLPE or through EnBW's supply chain organisation — will be positioned for the fabrication packages that follow if and when the FID is taken.
The 2029 FID date is the number to hold loosely. EnBW's cost discipline, not its engineering schedule, is the binding constraint on this project.