deugro Germany, working with teams from TenneT Germany and deugro Sweden, has transported three cable baskets containing more than 600 tonnes of high-voltage direct current (HVDC) cables from Sweden to Germany on behalf of NKT. The cables will be used for TenneT Germany’s ElbX project. ElbX forms the Elbe River crossing of the SuedLink transmission system, which is being developed by TenneT Germany. The system will transport renewable electricity from northern Germany to consumption centres in the south.
The cables were spooled into three baskets at NKT’s production facility in Karlskrona, Sweden. Each basket measured approximately 8.52 × 8.52 × 4.80 metres and weighed up to 226 tonnes. deugro Sweden’s local teams supervised the collection and coordinated cargo handling and loading operations.
Each cable section was manufactured and transported as a continuous length of more than 5 kilometres. As the ElbX river crossing is designed as a jointless cable system, maintaining the integrity of the cables throughout the logistics chain was a key requirement. Their dimensions, weight and continuous lengths presented challenges for cargo handling, transport engineering and operational planning.
To accommodate the continuous manufacturing and spooling process, deugro developed a marine logistics concept for the operations in Karlskrona. A dedicated coaster vessel remained at the site for approximately two and a half weeks, serving as both a floating storage facility and a shuttle vessel. Completed cable baskets were transferred from the production facility to the coaster using the factory's gantry crane.
Once all three baskets were ready, they were transferred directly from the coaster to a chartered heavy-lift vessel through double-banking operations. The vessel was equipped with two 150-tonne onboard cranes. After the baskets had been loaded and secured, it sailed to Brunsbüttel, Germany, arriving approximately 24 hours later.
In Brunsbüttel, the baskets were transferred onto a pontoon and moved by tugboats to Peters Werft in Wewelsfleth, near the designated ElbX staging area. deugro also arranged a floating sheerleg crane to support the unloading operation. At Peters Werft, the crane transferred the baskets directly from the pontoon onto self-propelled modular transporters (SPMTs), which moved them to the final staging area.
Representatives of NKT, project owner TenneT Germany, deugro and dteq monitored the operation.
