SHAPING THE WORLD Operating worldwide, the Jan De Nul Group specialises in dredging and reclamation, rock placing, trenching, rock dumping for oil & gas related offshore pipeline projects, quay walls, marine related projects, civil engineering and large-scale environmental remediation projects. Felicity Landon reports on some of its latest projects.
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ith a solid reputation for highly complex turnkey projects, employing more than 6,300 people and with an annual turnover of €1.8 billion, Jan De Nul is a world-leading contractor in dredging and marine engineering projects. Yet this Belgium and Luxembourg based company still retains its identity as a family business – the De Nul family started out in the early 20th century as a civil engineering company, and De Nul undertook his first dredging project in 1951.
Today the company has three main business units – dredging projects (including rock installation and offshore works), civil engineering and environmental activities. Thanks to some huge and continuing investments in personnel and material, Jan De Nul Group owns the most modern and technologically advanced dredging fleet in the world. Having invested more than €2 billion on 27 new vessels between 2007 and 2011, the company decided to add three more vessels to its fleet –including two trailing
suction hopper dredgers, the Pedro Alvares Cabral and the Bartolomeu Dias, each with a hopper capacity of 14,000 cu m, and the fallpipe and mining vessel Joseph Plateau, all launched during 2012. At the end of 2012, Jan De Nul ordered a 5,400 tonnes capacity cable turntable, for the vessel Willem de Vlamingh, which has been outfitted for cable laying offshore, ready for a major contract to connect the Northwind offshore wind farm, off Ostend, to the Belgian power grid. The cable turntable
