Construction under scrutiny at new JWP

They will not stop first stage inauguration in August, says the facility’s construction chief Manfred Wendt, managing director of the BUNTE construction group which heads a consortium building the €650m infrastructure for the Wilhelmshaven deepwater facility. Operators headed by Eurogate will spend a further €350m on superstructures.

Wendt’s remarks follow the discovery of 47 defect bolt applications, or bolt bursts, out of about 4,000 bolts drilled to join sheet piling together along the terminal’s 1.725m main quay wall.

The common-user terminal, Germany’s answer to deepwater rival Rotterdam, is due to start first stage operation of 1,000m of that quay wall in less than five months, 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 is owned by the JadeWeserPort Realisierungs Gesellschaft, grouping Lower Saxony (50.1%) and Bremen (49.9%), and expects to handle 2.7m TEU a year from the word go.

Wendt declared that “neither structural engineering factors nor the load bearing capacity or stability of the 1.725m long quay wall have been endangered in any way” by the bolt damage. He noted the damage had taken place mainly in sections where pilings had been rammed into clay rather than sand. Those bolt bursts discovered in sandy areas had already been sealed to prevent sand leakage, he said.

Wendt rejected media criticism of the technical competence of the ramming work by the JWP consortium. He said it had been of the highest standard and had involved the latest technology and equipment. It had also been carried out from firmly anchored working platforms to JWP instructions and ramming accuracy on more than 1,600 driven pilings had been significantly better than permitted tolerances, he added.

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

The BUNTE consortium also groups the firms of Josef Möbius, Ludwig Voss and Heinrich Hecker. Hecker has just applied for insolvency proceedings but Wendt said that would in no way affect progress of terminal construction.

By Tom Todd