A £ 400m contract was signed last month which will launch the first stage of construction for DP World' s £ 1.5bn London Gateway container port and business park development at the former Shell Haven oil refinery site on the River Thames. The joint venture of Laing O' Rourke Infrastructure Ltd and the Belgium based DEME Group' s Dredging International won the contract over rivals Costain and a Nuttall/Van Oord joint venture.
The new 900,000 sq/ft deepwater port and the 9.5m sq/ft business park will be the UK's largest capital investment project, promising to create some 12,000 jobs. The 3.5m TEU facility will be the first deepwater port to be built in the UK for more than two decades.
The new London Gateway Port will also be the first fully automated terminal in the UK, able to operate at full capacity in all weather, with dockside movement of containers run remotely from a control terminal.
The works will include a quay wall of 1,300m which will accommodate seven berths and a new 300m long oil jetty to be built by Laing O'Rourke with Bachy Soletanche as subcontractor. The dredging and reclamation works include some 30m cu/m of capital dredging in the River Thames over a distance of some 100 km.
Following intensive preparatory works which include soil investigations and the establishment of a river monitoring system, Dredging International will start the actual dredging early next year, with a number of high capacity vessels from the DEME Group's fleet of more than 80 large dredgers participating. Some of the gravel to be dredged will sold commercially by DEME's marine aggregates specialist DBM. Other hydraulic works involving DEME specialists are the construction of bunds, slope protection works and the installation of open fibrous stone asphalt (GOSA) mattresses.
Laing O'Rourke/Dredging International have 60 months to complete their work. A giant terminal warehouse is expected to be completed next summer and the first tenant in the attached business park should take up residence the following year. DP world will also fund £150m of improvements to the local road network. Plans for the port were first announced in 1999 and a four year public inquiry followed before consent was granted by the British government.
