Port of Townsville: Wind turbine project a ‘growing trend’

The Port of Townsville is positioning itself as a centre of large-scale green economy infrastructure with its latest project.

The Port of Townsville is positioning itself as a centre of large-scale green economy infrastructure with its latest project.

The port is looking for contractors to do bulk earthworks and roadworks so 160t wind turbines can be stored at a laydown area.

“The port recognised a growing trend in the clean energy market and has identified potential available land to develop into a wind farm laydown area,” it says in the tender documents, which were posted earlier this month.

A large-scale dredging program currently underway is providing the earth for new land to be built on the peripheries of the port.

That (new) 62-hectare land reclamation “would provide critical port and laydown infrastructure for the import of wind turbines and components into Townsville and the surrounding areas”, it says in the tender documents.

Large 70-metre wind turbine blades, bound for the Kennedy Energy Park Wind Farm in Hughenden, as they’re imported through the Port of Townsville in 2018.

The earthworks tender calls for clearing, stripping topsoil and crushing 7000t of rock into gravel.

The laydown area would accommodate an unspecified number of 130t wind turbine generators and 30t blades, it says in the documents.

The construction site for the Port of Townsville's proposed wind farm laydown area.

The 200m-tall Kennedy Energy Park turbines which now stand near Hughenden were imported - in segments - through the port in 2018.

Submissions for the port earthworks tender close January 17.

Originally published as Port of Townsville: Wind turbine project a ‘growing trend’