2020 Success Stories

The Port of Cromarty Firth is a national strategic asset which drives growth, prosperity and opportunity to the Highland region and to Scotland. Port-related activity generates £275m per year in economic value and employs 1 in 6 people locally. As a Trust Port, it has invested over £50m in infrastructure developments aligned to the requirements of the offshore renewables industry, creating first-class, modern facilities within the sheltered deep water of the Cromarty Firth on the north-east coast. The latest infrastructure investment will create a new 372m berth with a minimum water depth of 12m, which features over 110,000sqm of accompanying laydown area.

The Port is a leader in the offshore renewables industry and has played in integral role in the 588MW Beatrice offshore windfarm, 950MW Moray East offshore windfarm and 50MW Kincardine floating offshore windfarm. Together with the Cromarty Firth’s local supply chain, the Port has developed a significant track record within this growing market, providing extensive offshore engineering, manufacturing and logistics expertise, stemming from over 40 years supporting the offshore oil and gas industry.

The Cromarty Firth is ideally positioned to capitalise on the future offshore wind developments identified in Crown Estate Scotland’s 10GW seabed leasing round, ScotWind. In total, 14 of the 15 proposed project sites are within close geographic proximity to the Port.

The Port are leading an ambitious and collaborative initiative, Opportunity Cromarty Firth, exploring the opportunity for the Cromarty Firth to become a renewable energy hub and Freeport. Launched in 2020, the initiative is centred around accelerating the deployment, increasing the innovation, and reducing the costs of the sustainable pipeline of renewable energy projects taking place in the North Sea. Opportunity Cromarty Firth will increase local content options through new advanced manufacturing facilities, serial production sites and capitalise on the opportunity in green hydrogen production.

Along with Highlands & Island Enterprise and Global Energy Group, the Port of Cromarty Firth is a founding partner of DeepWind; Scotland’s supply chain cluster of excellence in deep water offshore wind energy. The cluster now features over 500 members drawn from industry, academia and the public sector and is the largest offshore wind supply chain cluster in Europe. DeepWind has ambitions to attract more offshore wind projects to the region, bringing investment and long-term sustainable employment with them.