A SUBSEA company has secured a contract to support work on a North Sea energy development.

DeepOcean will install cables on the Merkur offshore wind farm, based off the German coast.

Bosses at the company, which runs operations from an office in Darlington, say the project, awarded by Norddeutsche Seekabelwerke (NSW) will be carried out next year.

According to its brief, the business will dig trenches and lay cabling for the 66-turbine development, as well as installing power supply protection systems.

However, officials say the scheme carries challenges, with the Merkur grid connection export cable corridor crossing nine live cables and a commissioned wind farm.

Pierre Boyde, managing director for cable installation and trenching, who works out of DeepOcean’s Darlington base, which will oversee the Merkur work, said the deal was another coup for the business.

He added: “We are delighted to be working once more with NSW and building on our strong delivery record of cable lay and trenching projects in the German sector.”

The contract is another boost for DeepOcean’s order book after it previously revealed it will carry out trenching and backfilling work on 56km of offshore power cabling in the United Arab Emirates.

The company is also due to install cables for ScottishPower Renewable’s East Anglia One offshore wind farm and fit nearly 100 cables on Dong Energy’s Hornsea Project One wind farm.

Speaking to The Northern Echo earlier this year, Mr Boyde said the company had “irons in the fire” to expand globally, with officials eyeing contracts in Europe and China and the potential of interconnector cabling.

The business is already supporting the Nemo Link interconnector, which will deliver electricity between the UK and Belgium, but Mr Boyde said it wants to go further.

He added: “There is definitely a lot of positive stuff going on; we’ve got a pipeline that stretches into 2021 and 2022.

“We’ve always got a number of irons in the fire.”

DeepOcean complements its Darlington office with a marine site in South Bank, near Middlesbrough, which is used to prepare underwater equipment for use.