The Inverness and Cromarty Firth Green Freeport was selected as one of Scotland's first Green Freeports and covers tax sites at the Cromarty Firth, including Nigg and the Port of Cromarty Firth, at Ardersier, and at Inverness. The freeport is aiming to build a major floating offshore wind manufacturing sector, positioned close to the majority of ScotWind development sites.

Development is underway across multiple sites at once. The Port of Cromarty Firth has received government backing through the Floating Offshore Wind Manufacturing Investment scheme and is working toward becoming Scotland's first integration facility for floating wind components. Sumitomo Electric is developing a subsea cable manufacturing facility at Port of Nigg. Ardersier, one of the UK's largest brownfield ports, is being developed as an energy transition manufacturing and assembly hub, and has already placed contracts with more than a hundred local firms. A new training facility in Inverness has opened to prepare workers for the renewables sector at scale.

For accommodation, the practical challenge is that this is a rural and semi-rural area without the accommodation density of a major city, and demand is arriving across several sites simultaneously as construction ramps up. Inverness holds the most supply and functions as the base for many teams working across the wider firth, while Invergordon and the smaller towns nearer the port sites offer shorter commutes but far less capacity.