Abu Dhabi Ship Building (ADSB) has completed delivery of a Heavy Duty Cutter Suction Dredger to Dubai-based Gulf Cobla LLC.
The 60-metre vessel Khaleej Bay was specially designed to withstand the harsh conditions in the region.
"We are proud that ADSB is the first company in the Gulf to build a world-class dredger of this size, complexity and capability," said Lawrence Holliday, ADSB Chief Executive, in a statement.
"We believe Khaleej Bay is a world-class vessel that adds significant profitable new capabilities to their company," he added.
The new dredger provides dredging of sandy and rock composite seabed for the maintenance and construction of ports, harbour basins, channels and intake trenches.
It can also be deployed to retrieve seabed material for reclamation of land and stockpiling of material for utilisation for various purposes.
The dredger was designed by one of ADSB's strategic partners, Damen Shipyard Group of the Netherlands under a sub contract.
The new vessel is 60.8 metres in overall length, has a width of 14 metres and with a draft of only 2.2 metres, is uniquely designed to allow shallow water operations. With cutter power of 920 kW and inboard pump power of 1800 kW the vessel can perform dredging to a depth of 18 metres.
Focused mainly in the region for nearly 40 years, Gulf Cobla operates a small fleet of cutter suction dredgers, floating auxiliary equipment and work boats with the main focus on small to medium size dredging projects.
In the past eight years ADSB has built and delivered more than 40 new vessels for various commercial and military customers and at the start of 2004 the company had a backlog of 63 vessels under contract.
In addition, ADSB maintains a steady turnover of repair work on a variety of commercial vessels including tugs, barges, landing crafts, hydrofoils, dredgers and various oil industry work boats amounting to over 165 ship repair jobs last year.
Gulf News
