‘World’s largest lock’ underway in Antwerp

The Flemish Minister for Mobility and Public Works, Hilde Crevits, European Investment Bank (EIB) President Philippe Maystadt and Chairman of the Antwerp Port Authority’s Board of Directors and Alderman for the Port, Marc Van Peel, gave the official starting signal.

Over the coming years the new construction project will be one of the biggest infrastructure projects in Flanders, with 255 people working daily on building the biggest lock in the world. The lock is due to open in 2016, with 50% of its cost financed by the EIB. For Ms Crevits, the construction of the new lock is necessary to improve maritime access to the economic hub of the Port of Antwerp. For EIB President Mr Maystadt, the new lock will help to further develop efficient, multimodal and sustainable goods transport, which will benefit not only the Port of Antwerp and Flanders but also Europe.

The construction of the Deurganck dock lock is one of the Flemish Government’s key projects and is in line with the objectives of the 2020 Pact. Flemish seaports must be accessible to meet future demand. The Port of Antwerp is a major hub of the EU’s new core network for transport, the backbone of the TEN-T network. Like the European Commission, the European Investment Bank recognises the importance of the maritime sector in the development of the Trans-European Transport Network, in order to promote sustainable transport, job creation and economic growth and cohesion in the European Union.The European Commission has emphasised the role of European seaports as ‘gateways’ to the European markets in the new ‘Transport 2050’ strategy for Europe, supported by the Connecting Europe Facility.

In recent years the development of the Port of Antwerp has been concentrated on the Left Bank. With a number of important projects planned, such as the lengthening of the Verrebroek dock and the development of the Saeftinghe zone, a second point of access to the sea is essential.

The new lock will be at the end of the Deurganck dock and will provide the link to the sea between the Scheldt and the Waasland Canal. The lock will give shipping rapid access to all other docks on the Left Bank; the Doel dock, the Verrebroek dock, the Vrasene dock and the North and South Insteek dock. Sint-Antoniusweg is currently located on the site where the lock will be built, as is a dyke, which will disappear when the lock is built. Sint-Antoniusweg will continue, via the planned bridges to the lock, to be a connecting road.

The work on the lock will take 53 calendar months and be carried out by an ad hoc consortium consisting of five firms (Jan De Nul, CEI-De Meyer and Betonac, Herbosch-Kiere and Antwerpse Bouwwerken). The contractors started the preparatory work on the site on 24 October 2011. The site was cleared and topographical measurements were made. The excavation work is currently being carried out, and is expected to take until the summer of 2014. From then until the end of 2014 the contractors will be engaged in the concreting work. Throughout the whole of this time, work will be carried out on the steel structures. Work on building the lock itself will commence in the autumn of 2013 and is due to be completed in the spring of 2015. The final dredging work is scheduled from the end of 2014 until the end of 2015, and the lock is due to open at the beginning of 2016.

The design of the new lock will be based on that of the Berendrecht lock, which currently holds the title of biggest lock in the world. Like the Berendrecht lock, it will be 500m long and 68m wide. The new lock, at 17.8m below the local datum level, will be deeper than the Berendrecht lock and thus rank as the biggest lock in the world. Some 9.1m m³ of earth will be excavated, with just under a third, 2.7m m³, reused to backfill behind the quayside walls. The remaining earth will be used for further filling in of the Doel dock. Some 22 000 tons of structural steel will be used, three times the amount required to build the Eiffel Tower. A total of 795 000 m³ of reinforced concrete will be needed, enough to cover a football pitch to a height of 106m. The 57 000 m² of sheet piles that will eventually be used by the contractors would be enough to cover 80 football pitches. Although the dimensions of the lock itself are impressive, the job of building it will require precision engineering. For instance, the four lock gates must close perfectly and the mechanism for the bridges that will open must be accurate to within 1mm.