The submerged dredge pump is installed on the upper part of the ladder, which is double hinged mid-way to connect to the deepwin lower suction pipe.

This deepwin pipe is lowered by a special supplementary gantry which is placed on two small supplementary forward pontoons attached to the dredger by heavy duty piping.

In order to control the dredging process over differing discharge distances, specially developed software has been installed in the Caterpillar engines to maintain constant power over a large rpm range.

The dredger is positioned by six electrically driven winches, which along with two hoisting winches are all electronically controlled. De Groot's Control Department will supply all instrumentation to optimise and control the dredging process.

In order to transport sand from the winning location to the building site while avoiding costly road transport whenever possible, Boskalis has also ordered three floating booster stations from De Groot Nijkerk.

Coupled with the dredge pumps on board the vessel, these enable the sand/water mixture to be pumped up to 13km.

The booster stations can be used on land as well as floating.

Two side pontoons coupled to the main pontoon for floating operation are used as cooling water tanks during use on land.

The boosters have been designed to maximise the exchangeability of spare parts with the dredger in order to minimise the number of parts required in stock.

All three boosters will be provided with a remote control system enabling operation from the dredger. Each 15m long booster will have 1,120kW of dredge pump power pushing through 500mm diameter dredge pipe.

MJ Information No: 17443