The scale of Europe’s offshore power interconnection prize — 20,000km of new cabling needed by early next decade — is proving epic enough to keep Prysmian’s foot on the investment pedal despite a leaner few years for the sector than expected.

The looming proliferation of high-voltage interconnections between nations and larger offshore wind farms further from shore have convinced the Italian group to sign off on a second major capital investment in five years to build a €170m ($198m) state-of-the-art cable-laying supership, retool its manufacturing lines for 66kV high-voltage technology, and stage a $3bn takeover of US rival General Cable.