Netherlands-based company Blue H Technologies BV has confirmed its interest in developing a wind farm at Sikka l-Bajda, a reef located about two kilometres off Aħrax Point in Mellieħa.

Further developments on the wind farm issue are expected to take place next week, a government spokesman told The Sunday Times yesterday.

Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi said last Friday that the government was preparing to officially file a permit application for the development of the farm.

He said the site had been chosen for an offshore shallow-water wind farm, which would generate an estimated four per cent of the country's energy requirements, supplying energy for around 20,000 families.

Blue H Technologies BV, which specialises in the development of offshore wind farms, is one of the nine companies that submitted an expression of interest for offshore wind farm development in 2006.

Website windfair.net quotes a spokesman for Blue H as saying that the company had been following closely the wind energy debate in Malta and believed the technology it uses could be ideal for local conditions.

The company focuses exclusively on developing economic wind energy sites for offshore.

Under EU rules, 20 per cent of Malta's energy must be produced by alternative sources by 2020.