The Inch Cape offshore wind project is delivering a significant boost to coastal economies through a collaborative network of nine UK ports. These sites are playing diverse and critical roles in the project's construction and long-term operations, facilitating essential investment, job creation, and infrastructure upgrades.

The ports provide much more than just quayside space and berths for survey, support, and installation vessels. They are hubs for storage, warehousing, and marine services, while also connecting the project with local suppliers for tasks such as grillage fabrication, inspection, and general site support. A major focus is the provision of a skilled workforce to manage complex offloading, marshalling, and completion activities.

Edinburgh's Port of Leith is the most prominent contributor, hosting the ongoing marshalling and completion work for the project's foundation components, including jackets, monopiles, transition pieces, and pin piles. Forth Ports has privately invested £50 million in Leith to enhance marine access and infrastructure, ensuring a legacy of improved facilities. Nearby, the Port of Dundee will see its laydown area—already expanded to 190,000 square metres—used to marshal the project's 72 turbines.

Callum Hogan, Asset Manager, Forth Projects, said: "Forth Ports is one of the country's largest port groups, owning and operating eight ports across the UK including Leith, Grangemouth, Dundee and Rosyth in Scotland. Being part of this group means that Forth Projects benefits from a strong investment commitment across the port business in supply chain solutions. At our bespoke purpose-built renewables hubs in Leith and Dundee, we are able to offer an unrivalled service for major offshore wind projects. Inch Cape is the largest contract secured to date for Forth Ports and we are well under way in Leith, with Dundee due to start later this year."

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Offshore construction is being managed from the Port of Montrose, which is also currently home to the project's £6.5 million operations and maintenance (O&M) base, being built by local contractor Pert Bruce. This permanent presence is expected to create at least 50 long-term skilled jobs. Captain Tom Hutchison, CEO of Montrose Port Authority, noted: "Inch Cape represents exactly the kind of transformative partnership that Montrose Port has been working towards. To see a project of this scale choosing to base both its construction office and operations & maintenance (O&M) activities here speaks volumes to the confidence in what this port and region can deliver."

In the North East of England, the Port of Blyth is serving as the mobilisation hub for the project's two export cables, leveraging its specialist expertise in cable handling. Martin Lawlor OBE, Chief Executive of the Port of Blyth, commented: "With more than 25 years' experience supporting the offshore wind sector, the Inch Cape project further reinforces the Port of Blyth's reputation as a primary UK offshore energy hub with specialist expertise in cable handling and mobilisation. Projects like this also demonstrate the strength of the supply chain at the Port, with businesses working together to deliver a seamless service for our customers."

Further north, the Port of Cromarty Firth and its Invergordon Service Base are facilitating the mobilisation of heavy lift vessels for the installation of transition pieces and jacket foundations. Joanne Allday, Head of Strategy and Business Development at the Port of Cromarty Firth, said: "The work on Inch Cape will create further lessons learned to ensure Scotland, and the Cromarty Firth, continually improves and becomes even better at delivering these large work scopes."

Additional support is provided by the Port of Aberdeen, which has served as a base for pre-construction work, including unexploded ordnance removal. The ports of Ardersier, Rosyth, and Burntisland are also supporting the project through logistics, equipment maintenance, and survey operations. By embedding itself within these local port ecosystems, the Inch Cape project is not only building energy infrastructure but also leaving a lasting economic legacy across the UK's eastern coast.