Morocco-UK Submarine Cable Project Advances with £9 Million Scottish Investment

Scottish Enterprise donors have unlocked £9 million in public funds to repurpose Hunterston, the former nuclear power station on the Ayrshire coast, as a factory manufacturing high-voltage cables for the £1.4 billion marine section of the British company Xlinks in charge of building the 3,800 km submarine cable to connect Morocco to the UK, reports the website The Energyst. Its commissioning could create up to 900 highly skilled jobs.

Unable to find a global supplier capable of competitively supplying the four cables needed for this £18 billion mega-project, the Xlinks promoter, based in Essex and led by Simon Morrish, former McKinsey, and Dave Lewis, former Tesco boss, announces that the British company has decided to build its own factory on the Scottish coast. For its part, XLCC, the sister company created by Xlinks to build the HVDC cable in Hunterston, estimates the cost of converting its activities from the atom division to the twisting of kilometers of metal wire at £1.4 billion. In May, the North Ayrshire Council planning committee in Scotland had fully approved the XLCC company to start construction of the factory, which should be operational in 2026.

Ian Douglas, XLCC’s director, welcomed Scottish Enterprise’s decision. "XLCC continues to work on building a greener future for Scotland and the whole of the UK," he said, stressing that it "is essential to invest in local communities and harness their power." "Green energy is the future, and we want to empower Scotland to participate in the transition," he added. "XLCC’s projects in Hunterston are likely to transform the regional economy and provide an extremely important complement to Scotland’s offshore renewable energy capabilities. Working with our Team Scotland partners, we are working closely with the company seeking to meet the huge and growing demand for HVDC cables, both in Scotland and internationally," said Adrian Gillespie, Managing Director of Scottish Enterprise.

Xlinks will build a 10.5 GW power plant (7 GW for solar, and 3.5 GW for wind) in Morocco. The latter will be able to supply the UK with 8% (power more than seven million households) of its electricity needs.