ZWIJNDRECHT – SUEZ CANAL | On Thursday 6 August 2015, the consortium Dredging International (75%) and Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Company (25%) will participate in the opening festivities of the modernised Suez Canal in Egypt. Thanks to the widening and deepening of the canal, the waiting time on the navigation route has been halved. It is the fourth time since WWII that dredging and environmental company DEME contributes to the optimization of this major artery of the Egyptian economy.
The new Suez Canal has been completed in record time thanks to several consortia from the global dredging scene. In just 9 months, the 193-kilometre-long canal has been extended with a parallel waterway and deepened entirely over a length of 70 kilometres, which has reduced the 14-hour waiting time by half. This is an important asset for the Egyptian economy, aimed at generating new shipping activity and attracting new industrial activities.
In October 2014, the DEME consortium was awarded lot 6 with a contract value amounting to 540 million US dollars (421.3 million EUR). The Suez Canal Authority (SCA) hence commissioned the realisation of an additional 250-metre-wide, 24-metre-deep, and 29.5- kilometre-long fairway through the Great Bitter Lake. The access channels to the lake have been widened to 140 metres (see map on next page).
