Van Oord has agreed to buy a business that makes interlocking concrete armour units for protecting shorelines, ports and marine infrastructure.
An agreement has been signed with BAM Infraconsult, the company’s civil engineering consultant, on ‘the Xbloc activities and associated assets’.
A specialist laboratory will also be included in the transfer of intellectual property rights and the trade name.
The blocks, which were developed by Delta Marine Consultants, also in the Netherlands, were shown off more than 20 years ago in Lisbon, at the International Conference of Coastal Engineering.
Maritime Journal reported on the blocks at the time, and since then the blocks have been installed in multiple countries and used in multiple applications, from breakwaters to groynes, offshore wind turbine protection and land reclamation, as well as protecting coastlines.
They are made with moulds that form the shape for the concrete, which is mixed with specific properties for the specific project they are intended for – with different mass density according to the hydraulic design of the project, resistance to sea water and climate, and strength.
Xbloc says they are made either by lining the moulds up and filling them from concrete mixers, or if it is a larger project, a carousel system is used to move the moulds to a casting station, where they are filled.
In both cases the moulds are opened after curing and left open to build more strength in the concrete.
Coastal protection is high on Van Oord’s agenda. In January, it said it ‘reached a new milestone’ along the Romanian Black Sea coast, where it installed breakwaters over a length of 9 kilometres to protect beaches from storm waves.
