Van Oord marks highlights of Suez Canal expansion project
Van Oord contributed immensely to the success of the iconic Suez Canal expansion project being part of a consortium of global dredging contractors, the Challenge Consortium. The Company coped with all the challenges while executing its part of work. Summing up its achievements Van Oord highlighted major milestones in the project in an article posted on its website.
The construction of the second Suez Canal in Egypt, one of the largest maritime projects kicked off on 5 August 2014. Records have been broken, ships have been mobilised from all over the globe and the work went on 24 hours a day, Van Oord said. The contract for this immense project was signed by the Challenge Consortium in October 2014. The expansion of the Suez Canal will help double the capacity of the international shipping artery from 49 to 97 ships a day.
A few kilometres from the existing canal, between enormous mountains of sand, a stretch of blue water has been created. This section goes straight through the Sinai desert, is parallel to the current canal and is about 35 km long. In its totality the second Suez Canal measures 72 km long, 200 m wide and 24 m deep. With an effective build schedule of just ten months, construction of the second parallel Suez Canal was a challenge.
More than 1,800 people from 45 countries worked on the project, including 300 dedicated members of Van Oord’s staff. 21 cutter suction dredgers were deployed, including some of the largest and most powerful dredgers in the world, such as Van Oord’s latest addition to its fleet; cutter suction dredger Artemis. The Artemis has more than 24,000 kW of installed power on board. Alongside this gigantic dredge monster, Van Oord also deployed cutter suction dredgers HAM 218, Hector, Hercules and Zeeland ll. Van Oord’s trailing suction hopper dredgers Volvox Asia and Utrecht, and water injection dredgers Iguazú and Antareja, were also part of this impressive fleet.
The result of all hard work was celebrated on 6 August 2015, when the second Suez Canal was opened.
Highlights:
200 million m³ material has been dredged;
35 km long channel;
150 m wide channel (across bottom);
24 m deep channel;
50 km south of Port Said on the Mediterranean Sea.
Cutter Suction Dredgers - 21
Trailing Suction Hopper Dredgers - 5
Water Injection Dredgers - 2
Although the dredging contract itself was traditional, the execution period of less than a year was exceptional. Several milestones were achieved during execution. The most spectacular of which was that, at their peak, the dredgers were moving a total of 1.4 million m3 of material per day and 200 million m3 in total in just nine months. Another milestone achieved during the project was that it involved the largest number of dredgers ever deployed on a single project – 28 units and 40 pieces of auxiliary equipment.
It is worth noting that Van Oord and the Suez Canal share a long history. Adriaan Volker, one of Van Oord founding fathers, travelled to Egypt as early as 1897 to scout potential dredging work in the canal. In 1906, his visit resulted in a contract to dredge the Suez Canal from Ismailia to the southernmost point of the Great Bitter Lake. Bucket dredgers Suez I, II and III were built for the job. The project was completed in 1911 and the Company was back again in the region in 1949 and 1950.
