Construction of the port will require approximately 45 million cubic metres of mainly hard rock to be dredged from a 20km-long approach channel and the basin itself.
Weir Minerals will supply heavy-duty skid-mounted pump assemblies, each incorporating a Warman 550 TUL slurry pump, a 1000 hp diesel engine, a gearbox and a heavy-duty bearing frame. Each pump set will deliver a flow rate of 6000 cubic metres per hour and they will be deployed on two self-propelling, rock-breaking dredger vessels.
Tony Locke, managing director of Weir Minerals Europe, said: “This is a project on an enormous scale - the amount of solid rock that will be dredged would be enough to fill the Great Pyramid at Giza 18 times over or the Royal Albert Hall 500 times over. We have worked for several years with Dredging, Environmental and Marine Engineering (DEME), a Belgium-based dredging company which part-owns MEDCO, and our selection for this project is a result of the excellent products and service we have provided in the past.
