£80m outer harbour at Great Yarmouth opens

With Great Yarmouth already well established as an offshore support facilities centre, the new outer harbour will give a further boost to operations, increasing capacity and the range of activities. It is now well placed to service the ‘ East Anglia Array’ wind farm development off Great Yarmouth. Geographically, it is now the closest deep sea port to mainland Europe, with the outer harbour dredged to 10m to attract new container and ro-ro traffic.

Construction of the traditional river port’s new outer harbour began in June of 2007, with a joint venture between Van Oord UK Ltd and BAM Nuttall Ltd undertaking to build two breakwaters with a total length of 1,400m as well as the dredging and re-use of some 1.6m cu/m of sand to provide 17.6 hectares of land and the construction of 450m of quay. The new facility features two ro-ro berths which will accommodate vessels of up to 200m length.