Giant Lock Gates Ready for Antwerp

The four gates for the Deurganck dock lock in the port of Antwerp will begin their journey from China at the beginning of April.

The gigantic gates are being built by the Chinese steel constructor ZPMC, together with the trolleys on which the gates will ride, two combined road/rail bridges, the caisson and other items.

A ceremony was held on Wednesday 18 March in the Chinese city of Changxing to mark the official completion of the construction work.

The ceremony was attended by Freddy Aerts, head of the Maritime Access department (Flemish government), Luc Arnouts, director of the Deurganck Dock Lock Company and also Chief Commercial Office of the Port Authority, and Eric Beyts from the Waasland Lock construction consortium.

The gates

The lock gates have the same length and thickness as those of the Berendrecht lock. However, the Deurganck dock lock will be 4 m deeper to handle the larger ships that are now coming into operation.

This means the four gigantic lock doors will have dimensions of around 70 × 11 × 27 m (LxWxH) and will weigh 2000 tonnes each.

Loading the gates and ancillary equipment on board the ship that will take them to Antwerp, the Zhen Hua 15, began on 3 March, and the outsize load is scheduled to arrive eight weeks later.

Manoeuvering the lock gates into position will itself be a major operation that is expected to take at least two weeks.

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