Jan de Nul Group, a global leader in maritime, port, civil engineering and environmental infrastructure works, began the third maintenance campaign in the port of Bahía Blanca, consisting of a three-foot-deep overdredging of the Canal del Toro and Canal Exterior, as part of the current contract with the Management Consortium.
To respond to the needs of the area, the firm is working with its Ortelius drag suction dredger, a modern vessel built two years ago, 112 meters long, with a 6,000 cubic meter hopper capacity. The vessel has an emission control system called ULEv (Ultra Low Emissions vehicle), which makes it an ecological dredger.
In this sense, the equipment contains a catalytic filter system, an excellent resource for curbing emissions from combustion and converting nitrogen oxides into
harmless polluting elements and, also, its soot filter ensures that the finest particles are blocked.
The Ortelius can dredge up to 114 feet deep (35 meters) and reaches the access channel to the Port of Bahía Blanca with the aim of deepening it three feet, thus creating a sediment trap that allows the maintenance-free period to be extended until the end of the year. 2023. This vessel arrived in the area after the successful maintenance task carried out in the port of Dock Sud.
The dredging has been carried out efficiently and in a timely manner, since it respects the schedule agreed with the Port of Bahía Blanca Management Consortium, which contemplates approximately 90 days of work. In each of the campaigns, 2.5M cubic meters of sediment are extracted, which allows guaranteeing the canal designs for a period of approximately fourteen months.
This work is of vital importance for Bahía Blanca and for the entire country, since it guarantees the normal functioning of the access channels to the ports, speeding up the exports of millions of tons of agricultural products of national origin, which are transported through the alternative rivers to the Paraná-Paraguay Trunk Navigable Way.
