ZWIJNDRECHT | With the order of the ‘Bonny River’ at Royal IHC, the Belgian dredging, environmental and marine engineering group DEME is investing in a new generation of trailing suction hopper dredgers which will be trendsetting in coastal protection and dredging hard soils. Thanks to the combination of unique characteristics such as an extremely long suction pipe, a large transport capacity with limited depth and an additional heavy duty rock draghead, the multidisciplinary ship can be used effectively in shallow water and in hard soils.
Technological optimisation
With the ‘Bonny River’, DEME is responding to the macroeconomic trend of maritime sand extraction at greater depths and further offshore. A long suction pipe with a built-in submersible pump facilitates sand extraction from more than 100 metres deep. Thanks to the hull’s optimised design, the ‘Bonny River’ with its transport capacity of 24,000 tonnes has a limited depth when loaded, making the ship highly suitable for coastal protection assignments, even in regions with shallow beaches.
An additional asset is the second, shorter suction pipe for dredging works on a harder seabed. By equipping the vessel with a 75 tonnes draghead, the ‘Bonny River’ is multidisciplinary: as a trailing suction hopper dredger the ship can also remove hard soil which wasn’t dredgeable in the past.
