The agreement would see the French-headquartered company and its future local construction partners use the Port’s land and Firth berthing sites and cooperating towards further developing the facilities and infrastructure to establish a concrete hull serial manufacturing yard for incoming floating wind tenders.

Besides business opportunities for local suppliers, the manufacturing would call upon time-tested and proven concrete construction methods and create a mix of skilled and semi-skilled work in the Highlands. IDEOL has teamed up with Elicio, an offshore wind farm developer and operator in the Belgian North Sea, and BayWa r.e., a global renewable energy business with a strong historical presence in Scotland, to submit proposals for the ScotWind tender launched by Crown Estate Scotland under the “Floating Energy Allyance” consortium name.

Port of Cromarty Firth chief executive Bob Buskie said the partnership is a huge vote of confidence in the Port’s ability to help support a massive expansion of offshore wind off the Scottish coast –a pipeline of development predicted to be worth over £26 billion just in the first round of 10GW development sites.

He added: “This partnership shows the vital manufacturing role the Port can play in the rapid expansion in renewable projects off Scotland’s shores. We have some of the best marine resources in the world and are in close proximity to around 14 of the 15 areas identified in the Crown Estate Scotland’s marine plan for offshore wind development.

“This agreement is a significant boost to the long-term future of the Port, Invergordon and the Highlands, as it looks to capitalise on the transformation of the energy market from oil and gas to renewables.”

Paul de la Guérivière, CEO of Ideol, said: “This agreement is testament to our vision to build our floaters as close as possible to the offshore installation sites and in close collaboration with the local communities. We have demonstrated such high local content track record in France and Japan and do notsee any reason why we could not reiterate such success stories in Scotland.”