What we do

Challenge

To guarantee the safe passage of shipping traffic to the port of Hamburg it is necessary to maintain the navigational channel to a certain depth. The channel is 116 km long and extends from the North Sea to Hamburg.
In the years 2017 to 2019, Nordsee Nassbagger- und Tiefbau was awarded the maintenance contract in a joint venture with Van Oord Wasserbau.

The River Elbe is divided into 17 dredging sections. Dumping zones are allocated through dredge orders and are located outside of the navigational channel. The average sailing distance between the dredging area and the dumping zones is 35 km, with the longest sailing distance being 96 km. The dredging depth varies between 7.50 m and 15.80 m with a dredging tolerance of -0.50 m.

Two dredging assignments were planned for cleaning up the sand trap at Wedel due to environmental restrictions.

Furthermore, coordination with the since July 2019 simultaneous executed Elbe Deepening Project is required as dredge sections are transferred for deepening and need to be maintained at new design depth and new channel width after delivered back from the deepening project.

Scheldt River (Trailing Suction Hopper Dredger), Germany (back)

Solution

We performed the maintenance dredging works between Elbe 639 & 755 km; from the border of the port of Hamburg to the estuary of the Elbe Pass at Cuxhaven.

We eventually carried out the dredging, transportation and dumping of 30 million m³ of sand and silt. Additionally, we dredged, transported and dumped 5 million m³, which had resulted from cleaning the sand trap ‘Wedel’ twice, over a sailing distance of 45 and 96 km.

To successfully achieve the required results we frequently deployed two to three trailing suction hopper dredgers simultaneously.

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