Swedish wave energy developer Seabased is closing down one of its subsidiaries in its home country.
"Seabased Industries, which has a wave converter factory at Lysekil, is being liquidated because of “multiple factors”, the developer said.
The company said it is no longer able to paint or weld at Lysekil and so generators cannot be produced at the facility.
There is also no deep harbour access, which means it is not possible to ship kit from Lysekil, it added.
Seabased chief executive Oivind Magnussen said: “For over a year we have tried to resolve these issues, either in current or nearby facilities, and have retained our team of employees as we have done so. Unfortunately, we have been unable to find an adequate solution.”
Magnussen added that the closure will not impact the company's agreements to develop several wave energy facilities across the world.
Seabased said it will work closely with the authorities to find acceptable solutions for the employees affected by this closure.
Seabased chair of the board of directors Gunn Ovesen said: “It is with a heavy heart that we must close Seabased Industries, which has been a valuable part of the Seabased group for the last decade."
As the world’s first and largest dedicated manufacturing facility for wave energy converters, the factory at Lysekil and the committed team of employees in Seabased Industries has made ocean energy history on multiple occasions.
It is through this facility, and this team, that we manufactured the generators and buoys for the Sotenas wave energy park and developed many methods to scale up the production of our generators.
It is largely because of the work done by the team at Lysekil that Seabased is poised to go commercial.
For these reasons, we have endeavoured to keep the factory going as long as possible, despite extensive challenges in recent years, both practical and financial. Unfortunately this is no longer possible.
