New horizons in deep sea dredging Van Oord

NEW HORIZONS IN DEEP SEA DREDGING

Van Oord is a world-leading dredging, land reclamation and offshore support company and one that continues to exceed expectations. Philip Yorke takes a closer look at what is driving the company’s remarkable success and its latest maritime engineering achievements.

Van Oord was founded in Rotterdam in 1868 by Govert Van Oord and remains a family-owned and independent company. Today Van Oord operates worldwide as a leading contractor for dredging, marine engineering and offshore energy projects. This includes those for oil, gas and renewable energy. The company is headquartered in Rotterdam, the Netherlands and in 2010 opened a sales and support office in Houston, Texas. Today the company employs over 5000 people worldwide and in 2014 recorded sales of more than €2.14bn.

Van Oord is a major global player and this is continuously underscored by its ability to win prestige projects. Recently this included such significant contracts as the European Gemini offshore renewable energy project worth €1.3bn, and the Indonesian artificial island project which involves the reclamation of 160 hectares of new land off the coast of Jakarta.

Van Oord offers tailor-made, high-value marine solutions for projects that meet the challenges of the present and of the future. Safety, sustainability and continuity go hand in hand in this respect at Van Oord. The company also places strong emphasis on enhancing its value chain which extends from suppliers to its clients both large and small.

Multifaceted engineering expertise

Van Oord’s business strategy involves concentrating on its three core activities: dredging, offshore oil & gas and offshore wind. Peter van Oord, the company’s CEO said, “This strategy is aimed at both strengthening and investing in our position in our existing main activities. In addition to the investments in new vessels, the acquisitions of J.T. Mackley & Co (united Kingdom), the staff and equipment from Ballast Needham Offshore, and all of the shares in Dravo S.A. (Spain) in 2014 fit right into this strategy.”

Currently the company is seeing strong growth in its dredging and offshore oil and gas sectors but the strongest growth is to be found in its offshore wind division, which grew significantly in 2014 both in terms of turnover and organisation. This exceptional growth was based on the award of two major contracts: Eneco Luchtwerduinen and Gemini. Currently the development of the offshore wind market is showing no sign of slowing down with the Dutch energy agreement providing the stimulus in Europe for the development of new offshore wind projects.

Expanding fleet

In line with Van Oord’s 2013-2018 Strategic Plan, the company is investing more than €1 billion in new vessels and the modernisation of its existing fleet. In 2014 this included an order for a new ‘Fall Pipe vessel’, Bravenes, which is currently being built by the Sinopacific Shipbuilding Group Shanghai at its shipyard in Ningbo, China.

Two trailing hopper dredgers are also being constructed and have been ordered and these vessels are now being built at the LaNaval shipyard in Spain.

Early this year, Van Oord ordered a new cutter suction dredger and a crew vessel from Netherlands-based Damen Shipyards Group. The dredger, named ‘Ural River’, is a customised Damen CSD 650 with additional safety and environmental features according to specific Van Oord requirements. The vessel became operational in April as part of Van Oord’s dredging projects in the Caspian Sea.

The company’s offshore wind division has also been strengthened by its acquisition of the staff and equipment of Ballast Needham

Offshore. Another major investment in 2014 was the introduction of the cable-laying vessel, Aeolus, which was specially designed for offshore wind projects, and the construction of Nexus, the advanced cable-laying vessel that was launched in March 2015.

New deep-dredging technology

During the last few years, Van Oord has been developing an entirely new technique for dredging water at great depths. The company’s Unique ‘Deep Excavation System’ (DES) is its latest innovative method of the preparation of a sea bottom profile for the installation of offshore oil and gas pipelines. This system has been protected internationally by Van Oord’s global patents.

Traditionally uneven seabeds are prepared for the laying of offshore pipelines by installing large quantities of rock. As an alternative to this Subsea Rock Installation (SRI) method, Van Oord has applied its Deep Excavation System in Australia and Norway. On these major projects, the excavation of thousands of cubic metres of hard and soft soils and thousands of tonnes of rock is now unnecessary.

Van Oord’s Deep Excavation System allows dredging to take place at depths varying from 100 to over 1000 metres. The company’s flexible Fall Pipe vessels Stornes and Bravenes, can be equipped with this system, which has been designed exclusively in-house by the Van Oord R&D department. The system consists of the combined application of a sophisticated land grab and a Fall Pipe Remotely Operated Vehicle (FPROV). The DES also has a very accurate position control system and generates only very limited turbidity, which is vital in view of potential nearby, sensitive marine environments such as that of living coral.

“Nowadays, oil and gas are being extracted more and more from isolated fields in deep water and transported long distances. Our clients face these challenges. In order to meet their needs we offer tailor-made solutions by applying our extensive marine ingenuity. The Deep Excavation System is an example of this and a valuable addition to our complete package of offshore services,” says Joep Athmer, Managing Director of Van Oord Offshore. n

For further details of Van Oord’s innovative marine engineering products and services visit: www.vanoord.com