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Sumitomo Electric opens the UK's first HVDC subsea cable factory in Scotland

Sumitomo Electric held the opening ceremony for its GBP 350 million HVDC subsea cable factory at the Port of Nigg on October 19, 2026. The plant will make 525kV cables for offshore wind and grid links, creating more than 200 direct jobs.

By Greener Numbers Editorial Team · Published October 20, 2026 · Updated 10/20/2026

Sumitomo Electric Industries held an opening ceremony on October 19, 2026 for the United Kingdom's first HVDC subsea cable factory, a GBP 350 million facility at the Port of Nigg in the Scottish Highlands. The plant will manufacture 525kV XLPE HVDC subsea transmission cables and subsea inter-array cables used to connect offshore wind farms and link national grids.

The factory covers 58,000 square meters of floor space on a 15-hectare site inside the Inverness and Cromarty Firth Green Freeport. Sumitomo said it will directly create more than 200 skilled local jobs, with a total projected impact of more than 400 jobs across the broader UK supply chain, supported by a 'Train the Trainer' model and operator training programs conducted in Japan.

Subsea HVDC cables are a known bottleneck in the UK grid build-out: they move power from offshore wind resources to areas of high demand, and Britain has until now had no domestic factory making them. Sumitomo established the project in April 2023 and began construction in May 2024 after receiving a preferred bidder notice from SSEN Transmission for the Shetland 2 525kV HVDC cable project.

Customers are already lined up. National Grid said it has awarded Sumitomo the contract to supply HVDC cable for its Sea Link project, part of more than GBP 28 billion of UK supply chain contracts it has placed. SSEN Transmission, which is investing around GBP 29 billion over five years, said its proposed Shetland 2 link anchored the investment. The Scottish Government put GBP 24.5 million into the construction, according to First Minister John Swinney, who attended the ceremony alongside Secretary of State for Scotland Douglas Alexander.

For the energy transition, the significance is supply-chain capacity rather than new generation: domestic cable production shortens procurement timelines for offshore wind and interconnector projects that have been competing for limited global cable manufacturing slots.

The figures in this brief come from Sumitomo Electric's opening announcement and statements by the Scottish and UK governments and the company's grid customers; job and investment totals are company and government projections, not measured employment.

Official source: sumitomoelectric.com ↗