Global Dredging Majors Poised To Make Big Leap

International dredging majors like Ham Dredgers and Van Oord of Netherlands and Dredging International of Belgium are poised to make an entry in wake of the government opening up the sector to private operators.

Sources say, foreign dredgers have so far been allowed on a case-to-case basis when the monopoly operator state-owned Dredging Corporation of India was unable to meet the dredging requirements. The ports include the private ports being set up under various state maritime boards.

However, against the annual maintenance dredging requirement of about 52 million cubic metres (mcm) in the 11 major ports, it was able to dredge only about 34 mcm.

 

Dredging facilitates the movement of large vessels by removing the silt and maintaining the draft (the distance between the vessel and the sea floor) in ports. Most local ports have to be periodically dredged as the south-western monsoon leads to siltation.

As part of a maintenance dredging programme, Van Oord and Dredging International are involved in clearing about 7.5 mcm of silt in the Cochin port. Last year, Ham Dredgers was involved in the Calcutta and the Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust ports for clearing about 9 and 7.5 mcm respectively.

Foreign dredgers are being sought since the corporation dredgers have limited hopper (a container in the vessel where silt is stored) capacity. Its largest dredgers Acquarius and D12 have a capacity of only about 3000 cubic metres, while foreign dredgers have an average capacity of 4000 cubic metres.

In the private ports, the requirement is more for capital dredging to permanently increase the depth to facilitate the berthing of large vessels.

The sources said the corporation was overstretched with maintenance works and may not be in a position to meet the demand from the private sector and the state maritime boards.

They said capital dredging would initially form part of the project cost and wherever funding in foreign currencies was involved, foreign dredging companies would be expected to execute the works to ensure on time commissioning.

For maintenance works, ports currently earn foreign exchange in the form of vessel charges, which is netted against expenditure.