NIBULON Puts New Dredger to the Test

The Ukrainian company NIBULON recently carried out experimental work to deepen the rocky bottom of the Dnipro River in Kamianske town (Dnipropetrovsk region).

The works on the Dniprodzerzhynsk sluice gates were carried out with the help of dredger MYKOLAIVETS, built by NIBULON at its own shipbuilding and repair yard.

According to General Director of NIBULON, Oleksiy Vadaturskyy, the navigable pass in the area of Kamianske is one of the most difficult and dangerous passes for navigation through its rocks at the river bottom. During the Soviet period they were blown up with dynamite.

“Ukraine has committed itself to the European Union to maintain the depth of the E-40 navigable waterway from the mouth of the Dnipro River to Kyiv at 3.65 m. At present, the depth is 3.2 m, in particular through the rocky bottom in the area from Kremenchuk to Zaporizhzhia; there are about 14 such gates,” noted Yevhen Bachev, deputy head of Ukrvodshliakh SE.

According to Yevhen Bachev, Ukrvodshliakh hasn’t financing to perform dredging, neither has it its own equipment for this. Therefore, NIBULON was involved in order to perform experimental dredging of rocks and to calculate its real cost.

Oleksiy Vadaturskyy noted that at first, it was planned to find the necessary dredger in Europe or in the CIS. But the company decided to build a vessel at its own shipbuilding and repair yard. The cost of the project (a dredger plus to self-propelled pontoons) was $14 million, and it was financed by the International Finance Corporation.

The experiment in Kamianske will allow NIBULON to check the technical capabilities of the new vessel and to determine the real cost of crushing 1 cubic meter of rocks, so that Ukrvodshliakh could announce a tender to deepen all the problematic areas of the Dnipro River.

According to Ukrvodshliakh and NIBULON’s specialists, the length of the problematic areas, where it is necessary to crush rocks, is about 47 km. It is necessary to remove 20 thousand cubic meters of rocks from the bottom.

The company has already dredged the Southern Buh River at its own expense. In 2018, it plans to bring the working depth of the waterway to 2.4 m, resulting in a possibility to load vessels operating on the river to their full load.

After the cost of dredging is determined and if the funding is available, Ukrvodshliakh plans to announce tender for dredging operations in the rocky area with NIBULON to participate in this tender.

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