Moray FLOW-Park Faces a Full EIA With No Seabed Lease

Offshore Solutions Group still has no seabed lease for its Moray FLOW-Park, only a two-year exclusivity hold that runs to April 2027. Scottish ministers have ordered a full environmental impact assessment for up to 47 floating foundations whose nearest edge would sit 1.06 km off Findhorn.

The April 2025 announcement presented a first-of-its-kind wet store for floating wind bases, tied to ports around the Moray Firth. By October 2026 the hold still covers surveys, fishing can continue, and the live fight is on protected water inside the Moray Firth SPA and SAC.

A Two-Year Hold on 36.44 sq km of Moray Firth Seabed

Crown Estate Scotland says there is no lease agreement on the site. A subsidiary of Offshore Solutions Group, FLOW-Park Investment Ltd, holds an exclusivity agreement signed on 3 April 2025. That paper places a hold on a fixed patch of seabed so no rival can take a similar deal there for the term.

The hold lasts up to two years, in this case to April 2027, and covers two separate areas totalling 36.44 sq km. It lets the developer run a limited set of surveys if statutory consents are in place, and it leaves public rights of navigation and fishing in force. Crown Estate Scotland is clear that the deal does not grant full development rights and does not guarantee a later lease.

Shane Woodroffe, OSG’s chief commercial officer, said the agreement “allows us to conduct some initial surveys of our proposed sites, and engage further with local stakeholders and communities around our plans.” He added that the park is “set to truly leverage and enhance Scotland’s existing port infrastructure to deliver its floating offshore wind ambitions.”

OSG picked the Moray Firth after a three-year trawl of the UK coast and a detailed look at more than 200 possible sites, talking to government, regulators, ports and wind-farm developers. The exclusivity map was split into North and South zones. The company later dropped the South area, which it had been studying off Nairn, and said that cut the investigation footprint by about 60 percent. All remaining work sits on the North area off Findhorn and Burghead, with the final layout still to be cut down after surveys and consultation.

Forty-Seven Foundations Would Sit 1.06 km off Findhorn

The works now in front of ministers are smaller than the exclusivity box. A Marine Directorate screening opinion dated 7 April 2026, answering OSG’s request of 6 February 2026, treats the project as an 18 sq km anchorage in the inner firth, inside 12 nautical miles, with a minimum distance to shore of 1.06 km.

That grid is designed for a maximum of 47 FLOW foundation units of mixed designs, spaced about 600 m apart. Each unit would stand up to 40 m high, 30 m above mean sea level, and would be held by up to six mooring lines, with up to six anchors on each line. Four safety and security buoys, 15 m high, would sit permanently at the corners. No assembled turbines, substations or export cables would be stored there.

OSG’s own project page now limits the concept to seasonal storage of foundation bases. Company modelling says most units would sit for 5 to 27 days before moving for turbine integration and then to the farm. Peak use is put at about 22 units around January and February, falling to zero in late spring and not restarting until early autumn. RYA Scotland, which is talking to the developer for recreational boaters, has described the bases as about 100 m by 100 m.

THE PARK ON PAPER

Capacity and day-to-day use are different numbers. Forty-seven is the cap in the screening papers; about 22 is the winter peak OSG currently models. Both can be true at once, and neither is a built park.

Why Scottish Ports Have Nowhere to Park Them

The industrial case is blunt. Floating bases are too large for most UK quays to hold in any number, so construction programmes stall when fabrication slips or weather windows close. A Joint Industry Project that OSG led, with support from several offshore wind developers and Crown Estate Scotland, treated temporary storage as an urgent need to have in place by 2028.

OSG approached Scottish Enterprise in January 2024 as that first phase ended. Port of Nigg, the Cromarty Firth marshalling hub already handling giant fixed-bottom kits, lists wet storage as 0 on the Scottish Offshore Wind Ports Alliance profile. Other Moray and Cromarty yards can assemble and load-out, but they do not, on that listing, offer a wet park for dozens of floaters.

Scotland still claims the world’s largest floating pipeline. Offshore Wind Scotland puts the total at just over 23.5GW of floating wind after Shell handed back the 3 GW CampionWind lease in November 2025 and Ocean Winds handed back Arven South, 500 MW, in March 2026. Those farms will need a place to sit between the yard and the tow-out. If that place is not a quay, it is an anchorage. The second effect of picking an inshore firth for that anchorage is that the logistics fix now has to clear the same marine licence machine as the turbines it is meant to serve.

The Park Would Sit Inside Protected Firth Water

Kate Taylor of the Marine Directorate’s licensing team wrote on 7 April 2026 that the proposed works full environmental impact assessment is required under the 2017 marine works regulations. The site sits wholly within the Moray Firth Special Protection Area and the Moray Firth Special Area of Conservation. It is adjacent to the Moray and Nairn Coast SPA and Ramsar site, Culbin Bar SAC, and the Culbin Sands, Culbin Forest and Findhorn Bay SSSI, and it has connectivity to the Dornoch Firth and Morrich More SAC.

NatureScot told ministers the works should be treated as an EIA project. Moray Council and the Highland Council said the same, citing landscape, tourism, fishing, recreation, light, noise and views from the Black Isle and named special landscape areas. Historic Environment Scotland flagged possible setting impacts on scheduled monuments. SEPA pointed to marine invasive species and pollution controls.

PATHWAYS NATURESCOT PUT ON THE RECORD

• SPA birds: A large surface footprint could displace waterbirds through structure, habitat change and extra vessel traffic, including species already in unfavourable or declining condition.
• Firth SAC: Underwater noise from piling, vessel disturbance, collision or entanglement, and physical pressure on the subtidal sandbank feature are all in play for qualifying marine mammals and their prey.
• Findhorn seals: The works lie 700 m from a designated harbour-seal haul-out used by the Dornoch Firth and Morrich More SAC, with June to July pupping called out as a sensitive window.
• Osprey forage: The Moray and Nairn Coast osprey season runs from 1 April to 31 August, and surface marker buoys could push birds off coastal feeding water.
• Culbin sediment: Changes in current, wave energy or turbulence could alter sand transport that supports Culbin Bar dunes and the coastal geomorphology of the Findhorn Bay SSSI.

Will Rowley, OSG’s founder and chief executive, had already said the company would do a full study. After the screening opinion he put that on the project page.

From day one, Offshore Solutions Group has documented its commitment to undertaking a full Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) of the proposed Moray FLOW-Park project, as borne out by our work so far with the relevant environmental and maritime regulators, and our appointment of an Environmental Consultant who is already several months into a full and extensive assessment of the project’s environmental impact.

Will Rowley, CEO, Offshore Solutions Group

RYA Scotland says OSG has told boaters there would be no permanent exclusion zone, only tight, temporary limits around working vessels and moving assets, and that strips closest to Findhorn with the heaviest recreational use were cut from early layout work. Inshore fishing interests still see heavy anchors, chain and cable as gear they cannot work over. That is the local objection in one line: a “temporary” park still plants steel in a working firth.

Scottish Enterprise Wrote a £1.83 Million Grant Offer

Scottish Enterprise has no licensing role and, in its November 2025 freedom of information reply, repeated that the project has not been granted consent. It also set out why it put public money in. After looking at the business plan it made a grant offer of up to £1.83 million, paid against milestones, to refine sites, develop designs and start consenting so a storage product could be investable in time for the floating-wind market.

By 11 November 2025, £838,014 of that offer had been paid. Later payment tallies circulating in 2026 are not used here; the agency’s own FOI figure is the one on the ledger. OSG has said the public money is match-funded. On 1 October 2025, Scottish Enterprise’s newsroom announced a separate £500,000 investment from Paris-based engineering group Setec. Rowley called that a step toward beginning construction in 2027 and said FLOW developers who put money in would get priority access.

Suzanne Sosna, Scottish Enterprise’s director for energy transition, said the Setec cheque was “another positive step forward for the development of Moray FLOW-Park” and that the agency was working with OSG “to ensure we have the right infrastructure for Scotland’s growing offshore wind sector to thrive.” OSG’s local-value note puts about 60 full-time permanent jobs in the Findhorn to Burghead area in normal operations, with a higher count in construction, and about £82 million of activity inside a wider GVA figure of about £126 million covering anchors, marine support and a local control base.

FROM A 2028 STORAGE GAP TO AN EIA ORDER

1. January 2024: OSG approaches Scottish Enterprise as Joint Industry Project phase one ends, with wet storage flagged as needed by 2028.
2. 3 April 2025: Crown Estate Scotland and an OSG subsidiary sign the two-year exclusivity agreement.
3. 1 October 2025: Setec invests £500,000; OSG’s public aim is to begin construction in 2027.
4. November 2025: OSG drops the South investigation area off Nairn and concentrates on the North.
5. 6 February 2026: OSG files a screening opinion request for mooring lines and anchors in the Moray Firth.
6. 7 April 2026: Scottish ministers decide the works are an EIA project.
7. 2 October 2026: Moray Council lodges its EIA scoping response, asking for stricter visual and noise work while saying it has not yet taken a stance for or against the scheme.

The grant and the Setec cheque buy studies, design and consenting. They do not buy a marine licence, and they do not convert a hold into a lease.

Visual and Noise Tests Land on the Scoping Desk

On 2 October 2026 Moray Council submitted its official response to the Marine Directorate’s EIA scoping consultation. The council said it is not yet for or against the project, and it asked for a harder look at how the park would sit in the local landscape, including visual and noise assessments. That tracks what it already told ministers in the spring, when it warned that landscape effects could hit tourism and that fishing and recreation could be harmed, with light and noise still uncertain.

The political temperature on the shore rose well before that letter. Highlands and Islands MSP Tim Eagle moved a November 2025 public meeting to Universal Hall in Findhorn, with a satellite room in Nairn, after demand overflowed the first venue, and he later called it standing room only. He had joined a Findhorn Beach protest the weekend before. When OSG dropped Nairn, Eagle treated that as a gain and said the Findhorn site should go too.

In August 2026 he wrote that OSG had revealed the park, if built, “would be operational for over two decades.” That lifespan, if it is the operating case, is why opponents refuse the word temporary. A construction laydown that can sit empty in summer still leaves moorings, buoys and a control system on the firth for a generation. OSG’s counter is the seasonal model, the 5 to 27 day dwell, the local jobs and a community fund it says would be run locally. That is not yet tested in an EIA report or a licence application.

OSG Wants Construction Permits in 2027

Two clocks now run in public, and they are not the same clock. The Joint Industry Project wanted storage in place by 2028. Rowley’s Setec statement put the objective at beginning construction in 2027. The exclusivity hold, unless replaced by an option and lease, runs to April 2027. Missing any one of those dates does not by itself kill ScotWind, but it does leave the Moray Firth without the dedicated wet store this developer has spent public and private money trying to lock in.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The legal paper: There is an exclusivity agreement, not a lease, and fishing and navigation rights continue during the hold.
• The EIA gate: Scottish ministers have already decided a full assessment is required for the 18 sq km, 47-unit design.
• The public money: Scottish Enterprise’s FOI puts a grant offer at up to £1.83 million, with £838,014 paid by 11 November 2025, plus a separate £500,000 from Setec.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• Final footprint: How much of the remaining North investigation area becomes the licensed park is still to be cut by surveys, traffic studies and consultation.
• Operating life: A 20-plus-year life has been stated by a local MSP as OSG’s own revelation; it is not in the screening opinion as a licensed term.
• 2027 start: Beginning construction in 2027 is an OSG objective, not a consent.

The firth still has a hold, an EIA order, and a shoreline that filled a hall before anyone applied for a marine licence. Until that study is done and a lease is on the table, Moray FLOW-Park is a parking plan, not a park.