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Dredger Van Oord lands more contracts at Brazilian port

Suape a repeat customer


Tags: Excerpts from the Windmill

SUAPE, Brazil - A leading Dutch dredging firm, which has been operating in Brazil for over two decades already, has been awarded two dredging projects in the country’s coastal port of Suape in the State of Pernambuco. The two contracts landed by Van Oord are worth more over 165 million euros. Work is expected to start this year still.

In the first project, Van Oord will deepen the access channel to the industrial port of Suape. The contract involves the removal of five million cubic metres of material. Approximately one million cubic metres consists of rock, requiring some drilling and blasting. Upgrading the access channel from a depth of 15 metres to 20 metres is key to the port's growth projections and strategy to boost the economic development of Pernambuco. The project’s completion is expected to be in September 2013.

The second contract involves dredging an access channel and basin for the new Promar shipyard. Approximately six million cubic metres of material needs to be removed of which will be used for a new industrial site at the port. Surplus material will be dumped at sea. The project is expected to take about six months.

Van Oord will deploy two trailing suction hopper dredgers, a drilling and blasting platform, and a large cutter suction dredger on the projects. The firm’s vessels in Brazil fly the Brazilian flag and are registered there as well.

South America

Since 1995, Van Oord has carried out various development projects in the port of Suape. The company opened a branch office in the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro in the mid 1980s, now one of over thirty throughout the world.

The Rio de Janeiro branch services projects all over South America. In Mexico, Van Oord was involved in a beach replenishment project in Cancun, important for the area’s tourism industry. For the past several years, the Dutch dredging firm has been carrying out regular maintenance in Venezuela’s Orinoco River and the shipping lane in Lake Maracaibo. In Brazil, contracts frequently involve port and river access upgrading initiatives.