Building Dredging Equipment: Best Practices Across the Globe
Type:
Presented during:
WODCON XVIII - 2007 Orlando, Florida, USA
Authors:
Schattling
Abstract:
In the last decade tremendous changes have taken place in the dredging market. As a result of the booming global
economy especially in the South East Asian region (e.g. China, India, Singapore, Malaysia) large infrastructure
investments were made and this trend continues unabated today.
Globalization of the world economy has resulted in an enormous increase in goods being transported between the
different continents. This development in turn demands permanent improvement of the seaways, coasts and
estuaries, as well the port facilities and the respective inland waterways. These factors have been the driving force
behind the extensive increase in capital and maintenance dredging around the globe not to mention the immense
capital dredging work executed in the Gulf.
This global growth in dredging projects has significantly boosted investment in the worldwide dredging fleet as well
as in the dredging equipment market. It is interesting to see, that this fleet enlargement is not only taking place at the
market dominating European and American dredge contractors. It is also happening in an ever-increasing way at
local dredge contractors in the countries where the large infrastructure projects are been realized. For reasons of high
cost effectiveness both dredge new builds and dredge equipment manufacture are increasingly being carried out at
shipyards located directly in the so-called "low cost" countries.
This paper explains by means of several examples, how dredging equipment suppliers can act nowadays in this
increasing global market, to combine years of in-depth dredging expertise with local building power close to the
relevant customer anywhere in the world. It shows how an exchange of know-how is possible while at the same time
protecting one's own key intellectual property. Proof of this lies with real-life examples such as the largest ever built
trailing suction hopper dredge (TSHD) in Japan, the largest ever built TSHD in China and the largest ever built
cutter suction dredge (CSD) in India. On the basis of a TSHD built in the USA the paper suggests how a dredge
equipment supplier can work around artificial boundaries put up by the market such as the Jones Act.
Keywords:
Capital dredging, maintenance dredging, trailing suction hopper dredge, cutter suction dredge, Jones
Act