Van Oord, a Dutch contracting company that specializes in dredging and land reclamation, in early April deployed its Trailing suction hopper dredger VOLVOX ASIA to the New Suez Canal project.
The vessel has hopper capacity of 10,834m³, and along with three stationary cutter suction dredgers and a large self-propelled cutter suction dredger is working on the New Suez Canal project.
Van Oord is part of the consortium, consisting of Royal Boskalis Westminster N.V., NMDC (Abu Dhabi) and Jan de Nul (Belgium), who won $1.5 billion contract for the expansion of the Suez Canal.
The New Suez Canal project includes construction of the 72-kilometer new canal, parallel to the current one, that will allow ships to simultaneously transit in two directions as well as the widening and deepening of a number of existing sections to a depth of 24 meters.
Official inauguration of the new waterway has been set for August 2015.