Dredging heads in the spotlight at SMM

Since the development of the new series (from the smallest BDC 150 to the largest BDC 300) three years ago Italdraghe has sold a significant number of these both in Italy and abroad, mainly for smaller scale dredging projects in rivers, lakes or reservoirs which full size dredgers would find hard to access.

In April, Italdraghe we commissioned an SGT 250 cutter suction dredger for Lake Tana in Ethiopia.
Bought by the country’s National Ministry of Water and Energy, the vessel was assembled and launched in the port town Gorgora, on the northern shore of the lake.

In May, Italdraghe sold a BDC 250 model to an Italian dredging contractor (Adriacos) working on a beach replenishment project at the mouth of the Tagliamento River in northeast Italy. This was used on a Fiat Kobelco excavator, although the heads are designed to fit any type of excavator, whether land or water based. Another recent delivery saw a BDC 200 dredging head go to a gold mining company in Guyana, South America, which will be used on a Daewoo excavator for river gold dredging. A complete set of dredging equipment has been delivered to a diamond mining company operating in Mali, consisting of a PD 200 cutter suction dredger and a support self-propelled stand alone dredging unit. The latter was fitted with a BDC 150 dredging head. The two machines are working in tandem on extracting diamonds from a river.

In June, a BDC 150 was delivered to a Dutch company to be used for small scale dredging works in narrow canals and a new SGT 150 mini dredger was delivered to a small fishing harbour, Donna Lucata, near Ragusa in Sicily. Commissioned onsite by Italdraghe technicians and complete with dredging pipeline and floats, the cutter dredger is a turnkey package contract awarded to Italdraghe last year.

Italdraghe’s healthy order book for the rest of 2014 includes orders for Italy, the Middle East and Asia.

By Larz Bourne