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Dredging Delivers Denmark's New Container Terminal
01 Nov 2006
Dredging contractor Rohde Nielsen A/S has moved more than 7m m3 of sand in helping to construct new container terminals at Aarhus Harbour in Denmark. The project’s origins date to 1998 when a 25 year plan for the development of what is Denmark’s largest and busiest port was published. Work in the harbour area was to concentrate on the container port. Phase 1 of the project was completed by 2001, with Rohde Nielsen A/S playing a significant role in shifting 5.5m m3 of sand.
When Phase 2 started last year, Rohde Nielsen’s dredgers Kronborg R, Freja R and Sif R started work on the new Container Terminal East, which would lift the Baltic Sea hub into the ranks of the world’s top 100 container ports. Sand was pumped from another part of Aarhus Bay, where Danish authorities had given permission for winning.
Despite the proximity to the new area thesse areas were not the easiest or most accessible, with the sand won from some 20m below sea level.
Each round trip from the winning area to the unloading area and back took each dredger five hours. Working on a 24/7 basis, each vessel made almost five complete voyages per day, moving a total of some 6.4m m3 of sand. Rohde Nielsen kept within what were perhaps the strictest environmental regulations anywhere in the world.
More than 3.5m m3 was required to create land on which two new container terminals were to be built. Between these two terminals a new artificial basin gradually appeared, which was economically filled to a depth of 4,5m by the split hopper dredger Sif R, operating whilst there was still access to the basin from the rest of the harbour.
Danish contractors MT Højgaard started work on a new pier, with Rohde Nielen as subcontractor. After MJ Højgaard had placed the sheet piling, dredgers began rainbowing sand behind the artificial barrier to create the basis for a new quayside area which was later covered with concrete. Some 900,000 m3 of sand was delivered or this component of the project.
Rohde Nielsen also undertook environmental works on the south east side of the container terminal, filling an area that had been used as a dumping ground or harbour waste material for many years.
MJ Information No: 22414
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