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Dubai Invests In Artificial Resort Islands

In Dubai, space for hotels and beachfront villas is being created on four artificial islands being constructed off the crowded coastline. The first and smallest was completed in 2004, and is shaped like a palm tree. A later phase will comprise 264 smaller islands forming a vast map of the world. Altogether, four of these huge new projects are to be built.

In metropolitan centers like Hong Kong and Singapore, land space is scarce. Airports, container ports and chemical terminals are built on artificial inlands. Major land reclamation projects are also taking place in the Emirate of Dubai. However, the objective there is to create additional coastline for the tourist industry. Unlike the other Gulf States, Dubai has practically no oil reserves, and has therefore set its sights on luxury tourism, aiming to boost the numbers of tourists visiting the country from the current 4.5 million per year to twice that number in just five years' time. These tourists are primarily looking for accommodation close to the water, but the problem is that Dubai's coastline is only 30 kilometers long. Sheikh Mohammed of Dubai has therefore developed an ambitious and visionary plan to create four offshore islands, shaped to generate the greatest possible length of shoreline. Three islands will be shaped like palm trees, whilst the fourth will effectively comprise 264 smaller islands together forming a map of the world. Each of the projects will be protected by its own breakwater.

Dubai is aiming to serve the market for moneyed tourists and owners of second homes. Dubai can offer sun, sea, sand and safety - safety being relatively simple to achieve on an island so easily shut off from the rest of the world, thus guaranteeing privacy for the rich and famous.

Any land reclamation means dredging, and in Dubai, Van Oord of the Netherlands and Jan De Nul of Belgium are responsible for these large-scale operations.

"In itself, our project, Palm Island II, is not particularly difficult. After all, the seabed consists of stone and sand - the normal circumstances for our operations. However, the massive scale of these projects and the speed with which they must be completed, - in only three years - make them special. Just think about it - Palm Island II will require 135 million cubic meters of sand and rock. At the same time, a 17-kilometer breakwater has to be created around the island," deputy area manager Wim Dhont of Jan De Nul explains.

For the breakwater and Palm Island II, Jan De Nul (with 300 staff on site) has used sand and rock from the deepening of the Jebel Ali harbour canal using cutter suction dredgers. The majority of the sand was collected from a site 30 kilometers away, using trailing hopper suction dredgers. The hopper suction dredgers extract the sand, remove the water and subsequently sail to the unloading point, where the sand is discharged or hydraulically pumped off the ship, creating the required shape for the palms. Dhont continues, "Economies of scale are a must. The larger the quantities of sand the dredger can carry in its hopper, the lower the costs per cubic meter. In the Dubai project, we have deployed four trailing hopper suction dredgers with a hopper capacity of between 11,000 and 18,000 cubic meters of sand, each of which complete four round trips per day, in collaboration with a single pump-ashore cutter suction dredger."

Van Oord, which signed up for Palm Island I (totaling 70 million cubic meters and which has been completed) and the World project (totaling 320 million cubic meters, of which more than 50 percent has been completed) and various other projects in Dubai, is also deploying a wide selection of heavy-duty equipment. At present, thirteen trailing suction hopper dredgers are delivering sand. The working method at Van Oord (with 800 people involved in the projects), is based on the idea that 95 percent of the sand is unloaded directly within the profile to be produced, from the hopper dredgers, partly via bottom dumping (simply discharging direct from the hopper) and in the final stages by rainbowing, or pumping the sand over the ship's bow. Consequently, there is practically no need for cutter suction dredgers to 'finish off' the pumped sand.

"We are able to use this innovative method because every single day, we chart the entire area in minute detail, accurately surveying the extraction points and the progress of the work. Every morning, each hopper dredger is given precise instructions on DVD about where to extract sand and precisely where and how much sand should be unloaded. This keeps sand losses to a minimum.

These massive projects were contracted at a very competitive price per cubic meter. Any profitability lies in ensuring that the logistics operation is carried out perfectly. In that connection, equipment downtime is absolutely unacceptable," explains project spokesman Bert Groothuizen.

One factor facing both Van Oord and Jan De Nul is that the dredge spoil is relatively sharp, as a result of which the rubber components in the transport process wear rapidly and must be replaced more frequently. In the words of Wim Dhont at Jan De Nul, "The manufacturers of these vulnerable parts bear a major responsibility. Fortunately the people at Trelleborg Velp have kept a close eye on developments, and in double-quick time have developed a new material which has improved the useful life of the hoses by a factor of 20. In our business, it is impossible to work if we cannot have total confidence in our suppliers."

Quality is priority No. 1 in a project such as Palm Islands, says Dick Knol, sales engineer at Trelleborg.

On a dredger, the rubber connectors in the suction hose are flexible and crucial elements both in the onboard transport system and outside the vessel for reaching the shore. The dredge spoil, which is sometimes forced through the hoses at high pressures, can be extremely sharp. As a result, the demands placed on the steel-coated rubber products from Trelleborg Velp are high. Reliability is everything. Given the nature of a dredger, the costs of any production delay, which can amount to hundreds of thousands of euros every day, can never be recuperated. As a consequence, downtime on dredgers must be avoided at all costs.

Sales Engineer Dick Knol of Trelleborg Velp (part of Trelleborg Engineered Systems) based in Ede, in the Netherlands, is fully aware of the imprtance of the quality of his products. In Ede, sixty highly skilled and motivated employees work on the development, production and testing of special products for all of the major players operating globally in the dredging industry. They also monitor activities on board the ships closely to determine whether particularly hard-wearing conditions may make it necessary to replace parts more frequently than normal.

As Knol explains, "In Dubai, we developed a new material in next to no time that improved the working life of the slurry hoses by a factor of 20. But there is still plenty of scope for further development. In the near future, we will be offering new, spectacular products with an even longer useful life and, as a consequence, even lower costs per cubic meter of sand for the dredging companies.

"It is not for nothing that we are market leaders in this extremely dynamic and competitive niche market. In the overall picture, our products may be practically negligible in terms of costs, but in terms of importance, they are crucial.

A trailing suction hopper dredger is a dredging vessel which draws up sand from the extraction area using a suction mouth. The sand is then stored and transported in the vessel's hold. Discharge is achieved via bottom dumping (in deep water), rainbowing - pumping the sand through a nozzle over the ship's bow (in shallow water), or through a floating hose system. A cutter suction dredger has a kind of cutter unit mounted on the front of the suction mouth, with which hard material can be broken down and reshaped. A cutter suction dredger has no hopper - instead, the dredged material is pumped ashore through floating hoses.

Palm Island I (Jumeira) 2003-2004. Seventy million cubic meters of sand were repositioned to form this island in the shape of a palm tree. The project, which has now been completed, was undertaken by Van Oord.
Palm Island II (Jebel Ali) 2002-2006. This is a four-kilometer peninsula in the form of a palm tree, protected by a 200-meter wide and 17-kilometer long breakwater. The project involved moving 135 million cubic meters of sand and stone and was carried out by Jan De Nul (island and breakwater).

The World Archipelago 2003-2006. This is a 25-kilometer breakwater comprising 264 islands forming a world map. It is rumored that rock singer Rod Stewart has purchased the island representing England. The World is half finished. The entire project involves 320 cubic meters of sand and 30 million metric tons of rock.

This amount of sand is equivalent to building a Great Wall of China two meters wide and four meters high around the equator (40,000 kilometers). "Every week, we deliver five to ten million cubic meters of sand," says project spokesman Bert Groothuizen.

Palm Island III 2005-2010. This island is a land reclamation project requiring 1.2 billion cubic meters of sand.

The contract has not yet been officially awarded but Van Oord has already made a start on the project at the request of Sheikh Mohammed. If necessary, additional dredging capacity will be chartered from fellow dredge contractors operating the latest equipment. "Naturally, we will be calling on our well-known Western European colleagues," says Bert Groothuizen.

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