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Cemex Marine recently conducted an essential maintenance dredging campaign at the Port of Tilbury, keeping the berths deep enough to accommodate vessels of up to 100,000 tonnes.
The Port of Tilbury is one of the UK’s largest ports and is located on the River Thames just 22 nautical miles east of central London with 56 operational berths, 31 independent working terminals, 10.2km of quay and 5 million square foot of warehouse space.
The port has an annual throughput of 16 million tonnes with goods estimated to value around £8.7 billion; which makes it the largest port on the Thames and therefore essential for the continued supply of materials via shipment in and out of London.
Chris Grosscurth , Commercial and Logistics Manager for Cemex Marine, said: “ The project was a huge success and opens up many other opportunities for Cemex Marine, complementing our normal Aggregate delivery work .”
Adam Montgomery , Harbourmaster/Asset Manager Marine at the Port of Tilbury said: “ Dredging maintenance is an essential part of our business, helping to ensure that we are accessible to the wide range of vessels calling at the riverside berths at the Port of Tilbury. Working with the Cemex team was seamless, their knowledge and experience was invaluable to ensuring that this operation was carried out successfully again this year .”
The Port of Tilbury initially teamed up with the Cemex UK Marine team to explore whether the Cemex team would be able to support with their requirements to dredge the Tilbury2 berth to a depth of 15 metres, within the capabilities of its current fleet.
Using the charter vessel MV Reimerswaal, a 130-metre-long hopper dredger, which can carry nearly 7,500 tonnes of materials, Cemex was able to carry out the work.
As a regular visitor to the River Thames and using the Masters Pilot exception certificate, the team were able to adapt the Reimerswaal’s usual schedule to undertake this project, allowing the work to be completed successfully, on time, on budget and to the port’s specification.
The Cemex team worked closely with the Port of London Authority’s Hydrographic department, who produced daily bathymetric pre and post dredge surveys. This allowed Cemex to fully understand the progress of the work completed against the project’s requirements.
Over the course of five days, the vessel successfully extracted over 20,000m3 of spoil from the berth, and disposed of it at an approved site, 40 miles outside of the Thames estuary.