Dredgers Departing the New Suez

There are only eight days are left before the opening of the New Suez Canal.

Official unveiling ceremony of the new waterway, also known as the Suez Canal Corridor, will be held on the banks of the New Canal on August 6th where Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi will be joined by world leaders to witness the first ships traveling simultaneously north and south through the Red Sea – Mediterranean crossing.

The huge engineering project to build a new 72 km waterway, that will enable two-way traffic and double the current daily ship capacity, began with a national subscription to raise the necessary funds. In just six days, the Egyptian people managed to raise around $8.5 billion.

The construction of the project began on 6th August 2014 and despite initial estimates indicating that it would take three years to complete the project, it was finished in less than 12 months.

With some 43,000 workers, 80 contractors and six dredging companies, the project removed over 500 million cubic meters of soil including dry excavation works. Dredging works costed around 2.1 billion and included construction of a 37 km long new waterway as well as deepening and expanding the existing 145-year-old Suez Canal along its 35 km length.

Now, according to Chairman of the Suez Canal Authority Mohab Mamish, the dredging vessels that created this new waterway will be on their way home “in a day or two” after the minor adjustment to the canal are made.