As ground is broken on Sumitomo Electric’s new £350m subsea cable manufacturing plant in the Scottish Highlands, it has also been announced that the Japanese company is the preferred bidder for the new Shetland 2 undersea cable.

Based at Port of Nigg on the Cromarty Firth, the facility will include a 57,500m2 purpose-built factory for high-voltage cables, long-term site leasing in the area and investments in machinery and equipment.

Subsea cables are seen as key infrastructure to enable the energy transition to renewables, and as offshore wind projects ramp up in the North Sea they are in increasing in demand. This facility will help reduce lead times for these cables while also boosting Scotland’s renewable energy supply chain and supporting hundreds of jobs in the region.

At a ground-breaking event held at the site yesterday, SSEN Transmission, part of electricity infrastructure company SSE, also announced it had selected Sumitomo Electric Industries and its subsea cable delivery partner...