The economic downturn may have brought with it a sense of gloom for many sectors of the maritime industry, but the unglamorous world of dredging has been quietly bucking the trend. And while small cracks are slowly starting to appear in the form of the scaled-down or postponed project here and there, there’s enough evidence to suggest that the outlook will continue to be healthy for some time to come.
The ‘big four’ dredging companies – Netherlands-based Boskalis and Van Oord and Belgian companies DEME and Jan De Nul – certainly exude an air of confidence given their individual investments in fleet expansion.