Bad winter delays completion of new lock

Bremenports spokesman Rüdiger Staats told MJ the project, the biggest of its kind in Europe and originally due for completion in mid-2010, ‘will now be finished at the end of March 2011, some months later than planned.’ The first of the lock’s two gates will be installed in October.

Staats added, ‘The main reason is the very severe 2009/2010 winter, with a prolonged period of frost. The construction site had to be completely closed down for about eight weeks.’

Official acknowledgement of the delay came as the last of the new lock’s three unique 2,200 ton, 56m wide and 21m high lifting/sliding lock gates, all built at Poland’s Crist Shipyard, arrived in Bremerhaven. The third gate is a replacement unit for use if either of the other two is ever damaged.

Staats said the new gate technology was being used in a big lock project ‘for the first time anywhere in the world.’ The new gate ‘combines the advantages of a lifting gate, where the gate structure forms the closure for both filling and emptying the lock chamber, with those of a sliding gate.’

The sliding gate is divided into upper and lower sections. A hydraulic structure raises the upper part by 0.6m to equalise the water level in the lock chamber. Once the water level has been evened out, the upper part is lowered again and the gate slides sideways into the gate chamber.

The old Kaiserschleuse, built in 1897, was 215m long and 45m wide and could cope with ships with a maximum length of 185m. Today’s car carriers are well over 200m in length. The new lock will have a transfer width of 55m and be 305m long and 58m wide, with an area of 17,700m2.

Construction is in the hands of a consortium grouping Hochtief Construction, August Prien Bauunternehmung and Strabag. Bremenports engineers handled the planning.

By Tom Todd