News – September 5, 2008
A contract for the design, construction and operation of a silt treatment and storage system at the Port of Antwerp – the AMORAS project – has been awarded to Dredging International and Jan De Nul, supported by their respective environmental subsidiaries DEC (DEME Environmental Contractors) and Envisan, who will work in a joint venture company, SeReAnt.
The contract specifies a design and construction period of 30 months, followed by operation of the installation for a period of 15 years.
The port authority in Antwerp needs to dredge and store large volumes of silt on a regular basis. However, the available deposit areas for dredged spoil are now insufficient.
The Flemish Government, therefore, has decided to build a mechanical silt dewatering plant in the port area as a lasting and innovative solution for the treatment and storage of dredged spoil.
AMORAS stands for Antwerpse Mechanische Ontwatering, Recyclage en Applicatie van Slib (Antwerp Mechanical Dewatering, Recycling and Application of Silt), and the aim of the project is to provide a permanent solution for recycling and storage of dredged sediment from the Port of Antwerp.
AMORAS will be implemented in two phases. Phase 1 will cover detailed engineering and construction of the dewatering plant and will be executed in a period of 30 months. In Phase 2, operation of the plant will start for a period of 15 years.
Calculated in ‘dry material’ some 500,000 tonnes will have to be treated and storage on annual basis.
Said DEME: “The partners taking part in the SeReAnt joint venture company have extensive and specialised experience with all aspects of the AMORAS project, such as the exploitation of various silt treatment centres, dredging and transport of dredged spoil, de-sanding and mechanical dewatering including storage of dredged spoil. Moreover, these companies can count upon a substantial in-house diversified environmental expertise.”
“In terms of sustainability, the proposed silt dewatering installation meets all contemporary ecological demands, pursuing maximum efficiency of used energy in every phase of the process applied.”
“Moreover, the plant has a reliable and user-friendly design as a result of far-reaching automation, in-depth control systems and optimal use of available capacity, allowing SeReAnt to guarantee a very long life cycle for the AMORAS project.”
For the DEME Group the award of this contract has a high strategic value, since it confirms the pioneering and innovative status of DEME’s environmental specialists on a European level, and is the fifth long-term contract for environmental treatment and remediation obtained by DEC in the last couple of years.