PHOTO: TSHD Lange Wapper in Colombia

DEME’s trailing suction hopper dredger ‘Lange Wapper’ is making good progress performing maintenance dredging works along the Buenaventura Port access channel in Colombia.

The campaign to recover the navigational depths of the channel will see ‘Lange Wapper’ dredge volumes of more than 1.5 million m3.

Buenaventura Port, located near Cali on the southwest corner of the country, is Colombia’s largest port on its Pacific coastline handling more than 50 percent of their international imports and exports.

The port has a depth of 12.5 meters at low tide and 15.5 at high tide. This represented an important advantage for the Colombian port.

The governor of the Valley, Clara Luz Roldán, said recently that the dredging of Buenaventura must be seen as a priority not only for the Valley, but also for Colombia.

The competitiveness of a port depends not only on dredging but on a number of variables that make up its service, infrastructure and superstructure.