Offshore wind is one of the UK’s biggest industrial opportunities of the next decade, and the North East of England is positioning itself at the centre of it. This isn’t a claim made in isolation. It’s backed by ports, by skills, by decades of engineering heritage, and by a growing network of companies working together to make the region’s ambition a reality.
We’re proud to be one of those companies. Here’s what the North East offshore wind story looks like, and why the smaller businesses inside it, including us, matter more than people might think.
A complete cluster, not just a collection of companies
The North East doesn’t just host offshore wind activity; it delivers it end to end. From cable and turbine design through manufacturing, fabrication, installation and long-term operations and maintenance, the region has businesses covering every stage of a wind farm’s life. That completeness is rare. Many regions specialise in one part of the value chain and rely on imports or outside expertise for the rest. The North East has spent years building the opposite: a self-sufficient cluster where the pieces fit together.
The infrastructure to support growth
None of that works without ports, grid connections, and manufacturing space, and the North East has invested heavily here. Deepwater ports at Blyth, the Tyne and Sunderland are already positioned to support the next generation of wind farms, from marshalling components to long-term maintenance bases. The North East Mayoral Strategic Authority’s own Plan for Green Jobs is targeting a doubling of green jobs in the region, from around 25,000 today to 50,000 by 2035, and offshore wind is central to that ambition. A new North East Ports Investment Taskforce, bringing together the Mayor’s office, government, The Crown Estate, Lloyds Banking Group and the region’s ports, has also been formed specifically to unlock investment across quayside sites for offshore wind development.
Room to build at scale
Scale is the other half of the equation. The North East has the space, the seabed access and the industrial land to support projects of genuine size. Berwick Bank, one of the developments already being progressed off the region’s coast, is designed to power over six million homes at full capacity, making it one of the largest offshore wind projects anywhere in the world. Projects at this scale need suppliers who can match that ambition, and the North East is building exactly that supplier base.
That ambition took a major step forward with the Crown Estate’s announcement of Offshore Wind Leasing Round 6, targeted for launch in the first half of 2027. Round 6 is expected to bring around 6 gigawatts of new capacity to market, predominantly off the North East coast, with the potential to support around 10,000 jobs and generate upwards of £12 billion in economic value while strengthening supply chains regionally and nationally. It’s a significant vote of confidence in the region, and it confirms that the next major phase of UK offshore wind development will be concentrated here.
For us, that news is more than welcome; it’s a call to action. A leasing round of this size means a wave of new projects working through design, cabling and turbine layout decisions in the years ahead, exactly the stage where our software adds the most value. Our message to developers is simple: the North East supply chain wants to be involved as early as possible, not brought in once the big decisions are already made. Early engagement with SMEs like us means better-optimised designs, lower costs and fewer surprises further down the line, and we’re ready to have those conversations now.
One of the UK’s most significant offshore electrical systems propositions
Electrical infrastructure, cabling, transmission and the systems that connect turbines to shore, is one of the most technically complex and capital-intensive parts of any offshore wind project. It’s also an area where the North East has quietly become a genuine centre of expertise, with specialist engineering, design and software capability that few other UK regions can match. Getting this right isn’t a nice-to-have. It directly affects a project’s cost, its timeline and its long-term reliability.
If you want to invest in UK offshore wind, this is where to do it
Put those four points together, and the message is simple: the North East isn’t asking to be considered for offshore wind investment; it’s already delivering it, and it has the depth and the infrastructure to do a lot more. For developers, investors and supply chain partners, that’s a compelling proposition.
Why SMEs are the engine room of this ecosystem
Here’s the part of the story that doesn’t always get told. Behind the large-scale infrastructure and the headline investment figures sits a network of smaller, specialist businesses doing the innovation that makes all of it work. Ports and turbines get the attention, but it’s often SMEs solving specific, technical problems that unlock the cost savings, the efficiency gains and the faster project timelines that make offshore wind commercially viable in the first place.
We’re one of those SMEs. Kinewell was founded in Newcastle in 2015, growing out of research carried out at Newcastle University, and we build optimisation software that helps offshore wind developers design better, more cost-effective projects, from inter-array cable layout and turbine placement to transmission design. In early 2026, we acquired ForeCoast® Marine, a tool that uses metocean data to help plan and de-risk marine campaigns, extending our capability from design into construction, operations and decommissioning, so the same digital decision-support now runs across a project’s full lifecycle.
Software is only part of how we work. We also offer consultancy across renewable energy, drawing on our optimisation expertise and engineering knowledge to support clients through technical studies and complex decisions, and we build custom solutions where an off-the-shelf tool isn’t the answer, adapting our technology or developing new capability to solve a client’s specific challenge. That combination, proven software, specialist consultancy and bespoke problem-solving, is what focused, deeply technical SME innovation looks like in practice.
Our software has been used by some of the world’s largest renewable energy developers, including Equinor, SSE Renewables, Parkwind and Xodus, and it’s been selected to support the development of Berwick Bank, one of the largest offshore wind projects in the world. Typically, our KLOC software can save around 20% on cabling system costs over the project lifetime and cut development timelines. Multiply that across a pipeline of gigawatt-scale projects, and it’s easy to see why SME innovation matters as much as any port expansion.
Backed to grow: what the North East Mayoral Strategic Authority makes possible
None of this happens without genuine backing, and we’ve been fortunate to have it. The North East Mayoral Strategic Authority has made supporting SMEs and innovation a real priority, recognising that regional ambition on the scale of Round 6 can only be delivered if the smaller, specialist businesses in the supply chain are given the means to grow alongside it. We’ve felt that support directly: through the TIGGOR programme, delivered by the Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult with backing from the North East Combined Authority (now the North East Mayoral Strategic Authority), which helped fund the early development of our cable layout software, and more recently through an investment of £750,000 secured via the North East Accelerate Fund, managed by Mercia Ventures, in what was the fund’s first-ever investment.
That funding doesn’t just build our technology; it builds jobs, and it builds the wider economy around us. Every pound invested in an SME like ours ripples outward, into new roles here in the North East, into the local suppliers and partners we work with, and into the skills base the whole regional supply chain depends on. It’s a direct, tangible link between public investment and the region’s green jobs ambition, and we’re genuinely grateful for it. Thanks to that support, we’ve recently welcomed even more new people into our growing team, and we don’t take that growth for granted.
Rooted here, built for the future
Our roots run deep in this region. Kinewell was founded by our CEO, Dr Andrew Jenkins, out of research at Newcastle University, and our CTO, Dr Henna Bains, developed the technology behind KDOTS as part of her doctorate at Durham University. That academic heritage still shapes how we hire today. We recruit locally wherever we can, and we’ve built lasting relationships with local universities and colleges to help develop the skills the region will need for decades to come.
Alongside that, we’ve also welcomed people into the team from other engineering backgrounds, including some with roots in the North East’s oil and gas sector, whose offshore and systems experience translates well to offshore wind. It’s one thread among several in how we build our team, and a small example of how the region’s engineering talent moves naturally between industries.
A proud moment: the North East on the global stage at Wind Energy Hamburg
If you want a single snapshot of how this cluster operates, look at how the North East shows up on the world stage. Next week we’ll be at Wind Energy Hamburg, one of the largest offshore wind conferences globally, and rather than businesses turning up individually, the North East and Tees Valley are going as one coordinated regional presence, built around a simple, well-evidenced pitch: more than 8,000m of existing quayside across a 75km coastal arc, deep water quays next to extensive development land, world-class industrial infrastructure and significant power capacity, giving the region the foundations to scale quickly and competitively.
Sharing a stand at the event are supporters including Energi Coast, NOF, the North East Mayoral Strategic Authority and Tees Valley, ports including the Port of Blyth, Port of Middlesbrough, Port of Sunderland, Port of Tyne and Steel River Quay, and supply chain businesses including Eastgate Engineering, the Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult, Shepherd Offshore, and us. We’re going to Hamburg united, one region with one message, working together for the benefit of us all.
Being included on that stand, alongside the ports, the public bodies and the wider supply chain that make this cluster what it is, is a genuinely proud moment for us. It’s a reminder that when the North East goes out to compete globally, it goes out together, and that an SME like Kinewell gets to stand shoulder to shoulder with organisations many times our size, representing the same region and the same ambition.
You can feel that same spirit closer to home too, at Energi Coast events, in a room full of people from ports, developers, SMEs and public bodies alike; everyone is proud of where they come from and clear-eyed about what the region is working to achieve together. It’s a genuine community, and it’s one of the reasons we’re proud to call the North East home.
A region that competes globally, and knows it
What strikes us most, working inside this ecosystem, is how far the North East’s reach already extends. Our own software has been used on projects across the globe, and we’re not unusual in that. The region’s companies are winning work with the world’s largest energy developers, and the Mayor’s Green Jobs Plan is explicitly designed to compete with, and beat, other regions and countries for offshore wind investment. This isn’t a regional ambition dressed up in global language. It’s a region that has already earned a seat at the table internationally, and is building the infrastructure and skills base to keep it.
Proud to be part of it
We’re a small company by headcount, but we’re proud of the role we play in a much bigger story: a North East that designs, builds, connects and maintains offshore wind at every stage, and that backs the SMEs doing the innovation that keeps it moving forward. We’re growing because this region has invested in us, and we want to say thank you to the North East Mayoral Strategic Authority, to Mercia Ventures and the North East Accelerate Fund, to the Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult and everyone behind TIGGOR, for believing in what we’re building and helping us build it.
If you’re looking to invest in, partner with, or supply into UK offshore wind, the North East isn’t just worth a look. It’s already delivering, and it’s growing a team, a supply chain and a community to match its ambition.
