DCI completes RK Beach scheme

The beach nourishment and maintenance dredging work of Visakhapatnam Port Trust (VPT) for the year 2020-21 was successfully completed ahead of schedule, informs Dredging Corporation of India Ltd.

During monsoon season, the sand material at the RK Beach gets eroded affecting the Kursura area and also adjoining roads. To protect the beach from erosion and for beach nourishment work, VPT has a three-year contract with DCIL, until 2022 at an annual cost of around Rs 15 crores.

For the project, DCI deployed the 5,500m³ trailing suction hopper dredger DCI DREDGE XX. The vessel was one of three (DCI DREDGE XIX, DCI DREDGE XX and DCI DREDGE XXI) that was designed and built at the Royal IHC’s Kinderdijk shipyard in The Netherlands.

The dredged material that was removed from the VPT sand trap area was later pumped through floating pipelines to Kursura, situated at a distance of 4 km from the sand trap area.

Sri K. Rama Mohana Rao, Chairman of Dredging Corporation of India Ltd, congratulated the successful completion of this dredging and beach nourishment project.

“With the present fleet, DCI is catering to about 60 million cum of maintenance dredging requirement of our ports annually. It is felt that DCI will be requiring more dredgers to tackle about 160 million cum of annual maintenance dredging requirement in coming 10 years as projected,” the Chairman said.

To meet this requirement, DCI is considering procurement of a new 12000m³ hopper dredger at a cost of around Rs.600-800 Crores, as well as augmentation of the existing hopper fleet.