Promet Private Limited of Singapore recently won an S$18-million (about $8.4 million) contract for the second stage dredging and reclamation job at Sharjah Lagoon and Al-Hamriyah Port in United Arab Emirates.
This is a follow-up of Promet's earlier S$27-million contract won in the face of stiff competition from traditional contractors in the dredging and reclamation business in 1977. That contract, which took nine months to complete, involved the dredging of four million cubic meters of mostly hard materials to a depth of 25 meters with five kilometers of dredge pipes fabricated at Promet's Jurong yard.
The second contract, again won through Promet's subsidiary Harbour Engineers, a joint venture with a Sharjah firm, will see the second dredging of Sharjah Lagoon situated about 80 kilometers from Dubai and the first stage of dredging at Al-Hamriyah Port. Sharjah Lagoon has been earmarked to accommodate pleasure craft. About 1.5 million cubic meters of very hard cemented rock, sand, and dredged materials will be deposited up to four kilometers inshore for the reclamation of low-lying areas in Central Sharjah in this project.
Like the first contract, the new project will require the use of a 24-inch, dual-pump hydraulic cutter suction dredge (shown above) built specially for the earlier project to cope with site conditions in Sharjah Creek. Promet will again fabricate two kilometers of dredge pipes to be towed to Sharjah, and about 80 engineers, surveyors, and workers have been assigned to work on the job. Work on the second contract is expected to begin in September and is scheduled to be completed by the same time next year.