DEME
Both companies, Baggerwerken Decloedt and Dredging International have been involved in the construction of the main Belgian ports and the deepening and maintenance of their navigation channels in the North Sea and the river Scheldt.
[citation needed] At the end of 2009 DEME owned and operated 25 trailing suction hopper dredgers (TSHDs) such as the Jade River [fr], with a capacity from 1,635 to 30,000 m3.
Dredging International has subsidiaries, branches and representative offices in Spain, Portugal, the United Kingdom, Russia, Mexico, Uruguay, India, Nigeria, Bahrain, Panama, Venezuela, Singapore, Australia, China, Taiwan, Vietnam, Brazil, Ghana, Luxembourg, Finland, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Angola, Saudi Arabia and Latvia.
[9] Baggerwerken Decloedt & Zoon works on capital and maintenance dredging; deepening and maintaining navigation channels; major port development; reclamation of new industrial or residential areas, artificial islands or beaches; and coastal protection.
DEC is specialised in groundwater and soil remediation; sediment treatment; recycling and landfill techniques; environmental dredging; and the redevelopment of brownfields.
[18] In 2010, a consortium of industrial partners named Flanders Electricity from the Sea (FlanSea), submitted a research project for developing a wave energy converter (WEC) which will undergo an instrumented test in the summer of 2012.
The FlanSea wave energy converter will be a point absorber, modelled after the B1-device off Southeast Norway[23] which was developed under the European funded SEEWEC project,[24] co-ordinated by Prof. Julien De Rouck of the Department of Coastal Engineering at Ghent University, Belgium.
DBE is a founding member of Friends of the Supergrid,[26] established in London on March 8, 2010, with the objective to develop a pan-European offshore super grid for renewable energy.
[27] DBE is also a partner and shareholder in Renewable Energy Base Oostende (REBO),[28] founded on October 28, 2010, for servicing offshore wind farms in Northwest Europe.
[29] DEME has founded a deep-sea exploration and exploitation subsidiary company for underwater mining of polymetallic nodules: Global Sea Mineral Resources (GSR).
Now that lower grade nickel ores must be exploited on land, underwater mining activities are a viable business, to be balanced with concern over the environmental destruction of the deep ocean.
GSR acquired exploration rights over 75,000 square kilometers of the seabed in the eastern part of the Clarion Clipperton fracture zone (CCZ) of the Central Pacific Ocean.
For more than a century, DEME companies have been involved in capital and maintenance dredging in the maritime approaches to the Belgian coastal ports as well as the fairway between Vlissingen and Antwerp.
Between 1894 and 1911, Ackermans & van Haaren dredged some 25 million m3 when deepening the Belgian and Dutch stretches of the Western Scheldt, a high volume[2] given the technology available at the time.
[2] Other dredging works in Argentina in those years were executed at La Plata, Bahía Blanca, Puerto Belgrano, San Nicolas, Ensenada, Sorento, Quequén, the Paraná Delta, and the Matschwitz canal.
In the mid-1930s, DEME companies worked in the Persian port of Now-Chahr and in Phnom Penh, the capital of then- French protectorate of Cambodia, where Ackermans & van Haaren's flagship Antwerpen III was assigned for dredging the Mekong river.
Richardson[2] claims "the maritime history of France may be written by way of the involvement of Ackermans & van Haaren in building and dredging its Atlantic and Mediterranean ports."
In Dhamra[40] in the state of Orissa on the eastern coast of India, DEME deepened a 19 km long access channel and reclaimed 130ha for a new port,[41] assigning a water injection dredger.
The €100 million contract in Dhamra was executed by International Seaport Dredging (ISD), in which DEME is partnered with the Indian company Larsen & Toubro.
[45] Together with its partners United Development Company (UDC) and the Qatari government, DEME created a 22 km2 platform for the new Doha airport, which required 62 million m3 of sand and rock to be removed.
[53] DEME companies worked on construction of the first phase of C- Power's Thorntonbank Wind Farm,[16][54] including offshore soil investigation, transport and placement of the gravity-based structures, erosion protection, cable-laying, and directional drilling.
[55] DEME-controlled Scaldis Salvage & Marine Contractors was involved in the successful wreck removal of the MV Tricolor car carrier, lost at sea off Dunkirk.
Apart from the mega-dipper Pinocchio and two split barges, DEME assigned the trailing suction hopper dredgers Marieke, Krankeloon, Orwell and Pallieter to the €220 million project.
[69] In the Middle East, DEME is executing the dredging and reclamation package for the Ruwais Refinery Expansion project of Takreer in Abu Dhabi.
[73] Together with its partner Larsen & Toubro in International Seaport Dredging (ISD), DEME finished a 10 km access channel, turning basin, and berthing foreground in the Indian port of Kakinada, state of Andhra Pradesh, in 2010.
[77] In an execution period of maximum 14 months, a total of 8 million m3 sand must be dredged and transported over a distance of 120 km to reclaim a 412ha swamp area to 2.5m above the Black Sea zero level.
[78] In Hayle, off the coast of Cornwall, UK, DEME subsidiary Tideway was involved in precision rock placement for protection of the wave hub[79] and a 16 km power cable, linking the tidal energy park with land.
Tideway's fall pipe vessel Rollingstone placed some 100.000 tons at a depth between 25m and 35m by way of digital terrain modelling and a remotely operated vehicle (ROV).
[84] At the time of her commissioning in September 1994, DEME's 17,000 m3 flagship Pearl River became, according to Richardson,[2] "the very first suction hopper dredge of a completely new generation – featuring twice as much capacity as its biggest successor."
In 2005 DEME's French subsidiary Société de Dragage International (SDI) launched the world's largest heavy-duty and ocean-going cutter suction dredger d'Artagnan (28,200 kW installed power).
