Dealing with the Calcare di Bari limestone
In the heel of Italy, the city of Bari is the main economic focal points of the southern mainland. Their location on the Adriatic coast is ideal for docking large cruise and container ships and provides a direct connection for ferry services to other South-Eastern European countries such as Croatia, Montenegro and Albania. In order to build the new port terminal 586,000 m3 of limestone had to be removed. Typical limestone from the Calcare di Bari formation, known for its very strong hardness.
The powerful cutter vessel Willem Van Rubroeck far surpasses the existing cutter options on the market.
The cutter is a lot more powerful than others and therefore able to dredge in very hard rocky subsoil. This vessel gets its extra power from the combination of its larger electrical drives on the cutter and on the sidewire winches. This allowed the upscaling of cutter head size and pulling forces. These features together with a heavy cutter ladder weight, she pushes the boundaries of dredging potential.
Besides this vessel, we also mobilised four bulldozers, two 50-tonne excavators, one wheelloader, one crawler crane and the multicat DN46.
The crew of the multicat DN46 had their hands full setting up the 900m floating pipeline, 30-tonne dredge anchors, 30-tonne sidewire anchors, 60-tonne stevshark anchors and 180-tonne box anchors. These anchors ensure the Cutter Suction Dredger can deploy all its power and pull her cutter head firmly in the strong rock. Each location required a different set-up of the vessel, and therefore of all anchors, to keep production sufficiently high.
In parallel with the vessel's dredging activities, the new area for the future terminal on land is taking shape. The dredged material is pumped ashore via a floating pipeline of about 900 m. In this reclamation area, new quays will appear where container ships, cruise ships and ferries will be able to moor.
Excellent cooperation with local authorities and stakeholders ensured that the dredging activities could run in parallel with the busy ship traffic in the port itself.
