Alcatel Submarine Networks was chosen to supply the Caribbean European Territories Cable project (CELIA) that will connect Aruba, Martinique, Antigua, Puerto Rico and Boca Raton in Florida over a stretch of 3,700 km.

Per multiple news reports, the CELIA cable—to have an estimated capacity of 170 Tbps across eight fiber pairs, with a minimum of 22 Tbps per pair—will support continuous traffic growth in the Caribbean. The project is scheduled to go live in the third quarter of 2027.

Per an EU project description, the CELIA CETC segment of CELIA has two European Partners: ORANGE as French operator and SETAR as a Dutch operator. It will improve the connectivity conditions of two French and Dutch Caribbean islands, Martinique and Aruba respectively. The new cable will cover approximately 1,888 km. The cities where the landing stations will be installed are Le Lamentin (Martinique, France) and Baby Beach (Aruba, The Netherlands).

Existing cables that are located in the Caribbean region include the Eastern Caribbean Fiber System (ECFS), ECLink, and the Suriname-Guyana Submarine Cable System (SG-SCS).

The project will be able to sustain up to at least year 2050 the traffic growth for all citizens of Aruba and French Caribbean territories with almost unlimited bandwidth, low latency and high resilience. This new infrastructure will enhance their connectivity to the rest of the world and they will be equally connected compared to continental users from a digital point of view.

“The CELIA project represents a significant advancement in connectivity and will improve

JDR Cable Systems (JDR), part of Poland’s TFKable Group, has been awarded a significant contract by DEME Offshore to support Dominion Energy’s Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind (CVOW) project.

A press release, which did not cite the value of the contract for the project that includes 176 wind turbines and three offshore substations, calls for JDR to provide the  termination, testing and commissioning of all the 66 kV subsea interarray cables. The work will start in 2025 and continue into 2026, across three stages.

During installation, JDR teams will winch and pull the cables from the seabed to the turbines, then fit electrical connectors and perform termination testing to ensure secure connections. For testing and commissioning, high voltage tests and final inspections will then be done to confirm the integrity of the cables.

The CVOW project, with an expected capacity of 2.6 gigawatts, was described as becoming the largest offshore wind farm in the U.S., capable of powering approximately 660,000 homes. As part of the agreement, JDR will partner with local stakeholders to support development of the local supply chain and workforce to meet the challenges of the growing offshore wind industry.

“The Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project represents a major step forward in the U.S.’s renewable energy strategy, and we are proud to be a part of it,” said JDR Head of Services Brian Davis. “This contract underscores our end-to-end service for offshore wind projects.”

The Report to Members that follows this section describes highlights from 2024, but there also was a significant effort by Association volunteers and staff to position WAI—which this year celebrates its 95th anniversary—to be a responsive body for the industry.

Those efforts led to the creation of the Centennial Plan presented to the WAI’s BoD last October. In it, four pillars were identified as crucial: an Education & Training Center; trade shows & conferences; WJI and WAI media platform; and member users/customers.

Key beliefs of the mission include that wire drawing and extrusion are specific processes that cannot be serviced by other industry associations; that technology, digital platforms and AI are paramount; and that in-person events will remain important to hybrid workforces.

It follows that WAI members and customers will be willing to pay for value, but to provide that the Association must engage Gen Z and millennials by a focus on digital platforms, ESG and sustainability.

That is where the four pillars come in. WAI’s focus is on becoming the industry’s preferred training resource and those are the pillars.

For education and training, it is transferring content from its Fundamental’s course, an advanced extrusion course and deploying an industry-specific Learning Management System.

For trade shows and conferences, WAI will deliver high-value content that informs and engages the industry, the goal being to increase attendance and support the training program.

For WJI and media platform, it will provide a digital presence that supports the magazine and training program with a new website.

For membership/customers, the goal is to increase those numbers and establish a revenue stream that funds/maintains the Association’s mission.

The year to come for WAI is both ambitious and exciting. You can expect to see multiple updates here.