Nexans, a leading France-based cable company, is a global player in the move towards sustainable electrification with a presence in 41 countries. The company plays a pioneering role in the energy transition through its high-voltage and extra-high voltage cabling systems and associated services, which generate energy from renewable sources, including offshore wind farms. This is key to their mission of “electrifying tomorrow’s world.”
Maxime Toulotte, Markets and New Solutions Director at Nexans, said: “At Nexans, we are working to bring positive change to the industry, making electrification safer, more sustainable, renewable, low-carbon, and accessible. To support us in this mission, we need a reliable, real-time market intelligence solution to help us better understand market dynamics and provide the in-depth data we need to make secure commercial decisions.”
This is where Spinergie comes in: read on to discover how Nexans uses our Market Intelligence solution to track offshore wind and cable activity.
Context
With over 20 years in the offshore wind market and involvement in over 50 such projects in Europe and the USA, Nexans understands the many challenges the industry faces in the coming years, including an ever-tightening supply chain. Access to reliable market intelligence is paramount to maintaining the high innovation, agility, and expertise the company is proud to provide its customers.
The Nexans team required a data solution that provides a global overview of activity alongside granular details that are key to unlocking the complex issues that arise when bringing any offshore wind farm to completion.
Maxime continued: “We aim to remain at the forefront of the energy transition and play a key part in expanding offshore wind farm infrastructure. To do this, we must thoroughly understand the project pipeline and reinforce this with a trusted analysis of how the forecast will impact vessel supply. The market intelligence solution we use must help our teams stay ahead of the curve in a rapidly evolving market, and Spinergie fits this brief.”
Challenge
As a cable manufacturer and installer, Nexans is part of a unique market segment comprising very few companies, which results in high demand—and this demand is only expected to rise. Nexans has factories in Norway, Japan, and the USA, as well as two active CLVs. These vessels are used exclusively for the installation of export and power cables. A third CLV is under construction to join the fleet in 2026.
Nexans called upon Spinergie to provide data and analytics on their selected markets and infrastructure related to offshore wind. They needed a broad overview to understand upcoming activities and granular detail to learn lessons from previous projects. Furthermore, they required the solution to give them a solid understanding of competitor activities.
Floriane Coudun, Commercial Business Analyst at Nexans, underlined the importance of market intelligence to the team’s mission. She said: “It is crucial for us to have access to reliable market intelligence that we can rely on in our research processes. In an ever-developing market, vessel availability is scarce, and it can be difficult to fully understand exactly where they will be utilized in the near-to-medium term.
“Spinergie’s suite of tools is essential to help us understand competitor activities and where vessels are expected to be placed. This makes it significantly easier for us to plan our operations and make decisions backed by robust data analysis.”
Spinergie’s Solution
Spinergie’s market intelligence solution was customized to provide Nexans with the data and analytics they needed. The heart of the solution is a layarable Live Map, which gives the team an immediate visual overview of current market activities and allows them to access historical data points for vessels, wind farms, and cable lay projects.
Selected dashboards contain the in-depth analysis the team needs in their planning and research. Granular market intelligence helps them take deep dives into competitor activities to understand the projects they are working on, how projects are progressing, what contextual elements may be affecting vessel performance, and how long those projects are expected to take to complete.
Key Features Used by Nexans:
- The bespoke Live Map visually shows global cable laying and rock installation vessel movements and activities. A wind farm layer can also be activated to show current and planned projects.
- Fleet and Market Analysis dashboards provide a comprehensive database of vessels within Nexans' sectors of interest, with intuitive analytics that help users gain a deeper understanding of market dynamics, utilization, and supply.
- The Vessel Schedule makes it simple for the team to see the activities of their fleet and competitors' activities.
- Forecasting and analysis within the Wind Future Activity dashboards help the team plan for and understand upcoming offshore wind demand.
- Fact Pages for vessels, companies, and projects make it easy for the team to access granular details about previous and ongoing activities.
Additional Nexans teams, including procurement and finance, plan to utilize the solution for their individual use cases to achieve their goals. Under these use cases, additional tools can come into play for the company; for example, they can easily compare and contrast available vessels using the innovative Vessel Comparator tool.
Result
The Nexans team successfully uses Spinergie’s Market Intelligence to improve market knowledge and understand its dynamics. With three vessels of its own, Nexans can easily visualize its cable layer fleet alongside the activities of its competitors, see at a glance how projects are progressing, and identify where supply bottlenecks might emerge.
Floriane said: “I use the solution regularly to analyze industry activity and to better understand past projects' performance. The in-depth analysis and intuitive charts enrich our research processes and help me save time when creating internal presentations and reports.
“Colleagues regularly use the solution to monitor vessel movements and market updates at a regional level. Being able to easily access the data we need at a regional, country, or even project level is invaluable to ensuring we cut out the noise and only focus on what is necessary for our research.”
Overall, Spinergie provides Nexans with reliable data and thorough analysis that helps them successfully monitor market activities daily.
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