Posted on March 6, 2018
By Matthew Littlewood, stuff
The new dredge which has arrived to work in Timaru’s port will be twice as fast as its predecessor.
It is the first dredge to arrive in port since the decommissioning of the Pelican last year.
Known as the Albatross, it has been working at Tauranga Port, and will be stationed in Timaru over the next few weeks.
PrimePort Timaru marine manager Grant Bicknell said the dredge was contracted to work up to 12 hours a day.
The Pelican was contracted to work 24-hour shifts.
“This dredge is more efficient. We expect it to work twice as fast,” Bicknell said.
“It’s the new technology.
“This dredge is only five years old. The old dredge was nearly 40 years old by the time it was decommissioned.”
The dredge is a trailer-suction dredge, which sucks up sediment, sand, mud and shingle from the ocean floor, and then deposits it to one of two spoil grounds, which are between 1.5km and 3.5km away from the port.
The dredge’s work will include removing sediment from the seafloor to maintain the depth for ships going in and out of Timaru’s port.
The current work was scheduled, not necessitated by the heavy weather which ex-tropical Cyclone Gita brought in late February.
“This is routine work. The fact that Cyclone Gita arrived recently was just a coincidence,” Bicknell said.
The Albatross is owned by Netherlands-based company Dutch Dredging, which won the 10-year contract to conduct dredging operations for five New Zealand ports, including Timaru’s PrimePort, in November 2016. It has five crew members.
“We are lucky that many of the crew from the Pelican are now with the Albatross, including dredge master Scott Rogers, who is from Timaru,” Bicknell said.
Use of the dredge will be contracted between the five ports when work is required.
Source: stuff
