German terminal damage could cost €15m

Manfred Wendt, MD of the BUNTE construction group said the defects were “regrettable but not unusual with projects of this size”. They would not stop first stage terminal inauguration in August, he added, but rejected charges the builders would be responsible for any delay.

BUNTE heads a consortium building the €650m deepwater terminal infrastructure, which also includes Josef Möbius, Ludwig Voss and Heinrich Hecker. Operators headed by Eurogate are spending €350m on superstructures.

Wendt’s remarks followed the discovery of faulty bolt applications. At last report about 55 had been discovered last year and this year out of about 4,000 drilled to join sheet piling along the terminal’s 1.725m quay wall.

Wendt said a specialist appointed by project insurers was investigating the causes of the damage and that cost liability would only be clear after the investigations. He said he was assuming damage was not the result of building faults and that the insurance would pay.

JWP MD Axel Kluth said the builders were liable for the repairs, not the JWP or its shareholders, which are the states of Lower Saxony and Bremen. Lower Saxony Economics Minister Jörg Bode was quoted as adding, “the state ordered a completed quay and will only accept a completed quay”.

Kluth told MJ the repair costs would be about €15m, but stressed that was just a rough estimate. The exact figure would only be known after the work had been completed, he said.

Wendt rejected criticism in the media and elsewhere of the technical competence of the ramming work carried out by the JWP consortium. He said “neither structural engineering factors nor the load bearing capacity or stability of the quay wall have been endangered in any way” by the damage.

He also said the quay work had been of the highest standard and had involved the latest technology and equipment. It had been carried out from firmly anchored working platforms to JWP instructions and the ramming accuracy on more than 1,600 driven pilings had been significantly better than permitted tolerances.

“We have created a sheet piling quay wall of the required stability, which needs fear no quality comparison anywhere”, Wendt said.

The common-user JadeWeserPort terminal is Germany’s answer to deepwater Rhine Estuary Dutch rival Rotterdam. It is due to start first stage operation of 1,000m of quay wall on 5 August. The whole terminal, on 18m of water, will open a year later to handle container ships of 430m length, independent of tide. It expects to handle 2.7m TEU a year.

By Tom Todd