Key facts at a glance
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Client | TenneT (Dutch/German TSO) |
| Contractors named | DEME (marine installation), Prysmian (cable) |
| Location | Veerse Meer, Zeeland, southwest Netherlands |
| Method | Purpose-built pontoon, vertical cable placement, high-pressure water jet fluidisation |
| Burial depth | At least 3 m |
| Announced start | 29 October 2026 (trade press) |
| Planned completion | Spring 2027, ahead of the summer recreation season |
| Bundled services | HV power cores, spare cables, fibre optics |
What is actually happening in the Veerse Meer
DEME and Prysmian have started installing high-voltage export cables across the Veerse Meer, the brackish lake in Zeeland that sits between the North Sea coast and the Dutch mainland. The work belongs to two of TenneT's 2 GW-class offshore grid connections: IJmuiden Ver Alpha and Nederwiek 1. Once energised, these links will carry power from future wind farms off the Dutch coast to the onshore grid.
The distinguishing feature is not the cable itself but how it is being buried. Rather than deploying an offshore cable-laying vessel, DEME has built a pontoon specifically for the lake's conditions. The pontoon carries the cable carousels and handling equipment, and places the cable vertically into the seabed while high-pressure water jets temporarily fluidise the sand beneath it. The lakebed then settles back naturally, which limits turbidity and disturbance — a meaningful consideration in a shallow, enclosed water body with a sensitive ecology and heavy recreational use.
The installation is bundling HV power cables, spare cables and fibre optics in a single campaign, which is a more complex logistics exercise than a single-product lay and points to integrated installation of the communication/SCADA assets alongside the power cores.
Why the lake section matters more than its length suggests
The Veerse Meer is a bottleneck of timing rather than of scale. Installation is scheduled to run until spring 2027 specifically so that the lake is fully available again for water sports and recreation during the summer season. That seasonal window is the most commercially reliable signal in the record: it makes the campaign schedule-driven, weather- and permit-sensitive, and intolerant of slippage.
For suppliers and subcontractors, the corollary is that any works tied to this section — vessel and pontoon support, cable handling equipment, jointing and termination, survey, and any environmental monitoring — are compressed into a single autumn-to-spring window.
Where the steel exposure sits
The burial method is deliberately designed to avoid rigid protection hardware. Cables placed at 3 m depth in a self-closing fluidised trench generally need less rock placement, mattress or split-pipe protection than a surface-laid or shallow-trenched route. On the lake section itself, therefore, steel content is likely to be limited to the pontoon's own structure, carousels, tensioners and guide gear, and jointing/termination hardware.
The larger steel question belongs to the wider IJmuiden Ver Alpha and Nederwiek 1 programmes — offshore substation topsides, jackets and foundations, landfall structures and onshore station steelwork — which are procured by TenneT through separate packages. No source reviewed for this article identifies the EPCI contractors or the steel suppliers for those packages, and none should be assumed to be open or closed on the basis of this milestone.
What remains uncertain
The available record is thin, and several points that would normally anchor a project update are not established:
- Award date and contract structure — whether TenneT awarded a single joint package to DEME and Prysmian, two parallel contracts, or a Prysmian supply-and-install scope with DEME as marine subcontractor.
- Supply versus installation split — Prysmian's role is consistent with cable manufacturing, but no source reviewed confirms this.
- Cable specification — lengths, voltage rating and conductor sizes for these two connections are not stated in accessible sources, so no voltage class should be quoted as fact.
- Start date — 29 October 2026 is the announcement date in trade press; the first day of physical works is not independently confirmed.
- EPC/EPCI contractors for the platforms, landfalls and onshore stations.
Readers planning procurement or bid activity around these schemes should treat the Veerse Meer installation as a construction-phase milestone, not as evidence that upstream packages remain available.
The commercial read-through
The pairing of a European cable manufacturer with a Belgian marine contractor is the established delivery model for Dutch HV export cabling, and it reinforces DEME's position in the Dutch offshore market, where it is simultaneously active on the Zeevonk wind farm. For the steel supply chain, the near-term signal is modest on the lake section itself; the material exposure lies in the offshore and onshore infrastructure that these cables ultimately connect, where package status needs to be verified directly with TenneT rather than inferred from this announcement.
Sources and confidence
This article draws on trade press reporting of the installation start and DEME's own corporate news index. Primary sources from TenneT and Prysmian were not accessible during research. Technical and scheduling details rest on a single trade-press account and should be verified against TenneT project documentation before being used for commercial decisions.