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Port expansion, Balboa

The plans to expand the Panama Canal represent one of the most important infrastructure improvements of the 21<sup>st</sup> century. Since its opening in 1913 the Canal has provided the shortest and most economically viable shipping route from Pacific to Atlantic seaports. With the ever-increasing size of modern-day vessels, it was inevitable that the Canal would need to be widened and deepened. The expansion of the Canal has made the extension of the Port of Balboa at the mouth of the canal on the Pacific Ocean a necessity. The Phase 4 projects included Marine Works and Civil Works to improve two existing berths and to build a completely new berth capable of handling not only Post Panamax but also Super Post Panamax ships.

In 2007 a contract for the improvement behind berths 16 and 17 at the container port of Balboa was awarded to Boskalis by Panama Ports Company SA, a member of the Hutchison Port Holding Group of Hong Kong, to be completed in a 15 month timeframe. Soon after, other contracts to build a completely new berth followed. The contract required dredging, reclamation and improvement of water and land areas. At Berth 18, in addition, drilling and blasting rock was necessary. 

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Port development, Gothenburg

Gothenburg turns around some 34 million tons of cargo annually, including 700,000 TEU (containers), and is unique in the region. With regard to the variety and frequency of calls from intercontinental liner trade the port is outstanding in Sweden. The port can be reached from the sea via two different channels: Torshamnen Fairway and Böttö Fairway. From a navigational point of view both channels needed to be deepened and widened at a number of places. Thus there were two good reasons to enhance the fairways: securing the port’s future as the premier port for liner trade and creating safer navigation. This resulted into a major dredging contract which was awarded in June 2002 to Boskalis Westminster Dredging Company.

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Remediation, Urk harbor area

Many port areas requiring dredging works have been forced to put projects on hold due to the absence of an environmentally safe solution for the disposal or processing of contaminated sediments. While this is a global problem, the availability of central, large-scale repositories in the Netherlands has transformed disposal economics at the national level. Nevertheless, the high level of debris encountered during the dredging of ports and harbors remains a major challenge to all contractors. The hydraulic transport of sediments with a high debris content is impossible.

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Port construction, Pusan

The 4th largest container terminal in the world is located in the South East of the South Korean peninsula at Busan. As the old port is completely surrounded by the metro-city, expansion of the old port is restricted. To solve the chronic phenomenon of cargo congestion MOMAF (Ministry of Marine and Fisheries) decided in 1997 to construct a new port situated 20 km west of Busan with a final total handling capacity of 4.6 million TEU and total expenses of 4.2 billion USD.

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Port construction and environmental monitoring, Mejillones

Boskalis International B.V. was working as a subcontractor to the Chilean civil contractor Empresa Constructora BELFI SA, which was awarded the contract to construct phase 1 of the New Mega Port Mejillones. This port has been developed in order to ship the copper of the Chilean mining corporation CODELCO.

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Cleanup, Ketelmeer

Ketelmeer, a lake in the Netherlands with a length of some 10 kilometers and a width varying from two to three kilometers, separates the North Eastern and Southern Polders constructed during the late 1960s and early 1970s. It is a major example of the problem of 'historic pollution'. Lake Ketelmeer receives the waters of the Rijn and IJssel and over a period of three or more decades, tens of millions of cubic meters of highly contaminated sediments entered Ketelmeer from hundreds of upstream locations. The bottom was covered by polluted sediments to an average depth of 50 cm. A significant proportion of this material had to be removed, or capped by the cleaner sediments of recent years, if a normal aquatic environment was to be restored.

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Tunnel construction Warnow, Rostock

The Warnow Tunnel is located in Rostock, Germany, at the old mouth of the river Warnow in the Baltic Sea. In the DDR period this area grew out to be the main harbor of East-Germany. After the 'turn' (die Wende) in 1989 the port more or less died. Goods came cheaper and quicker from Rotterdam, Bremen and Hamburg by rail.