Royal IHC (IHC) is constructing the first vessel in its range of competitively priced standard trailing suction hopper dredgers (TSHD). It has started to build the Easydredge™ 2700 for stock in response to the increasing global demand for TSHDs with an extremely short delivery time.
The new vessel will be supplied with a "world-dredging package", which includes bottom doors, a bow coupling and a dredging depth of 25m. This makes her suitable for a wide range of tasks, from the maintenance of ports and channels, to land reclamation.
Fer Tummers, Managing Director of IHC's Dredging Division, says: "Building a TSHD for stock is a logical step forward for IHC. We are convinced that this is also an excellent opportunity for our customers operating worldwide. Availability of dredging equipment often causes a bottleneck for new entrants to this market. The need to have equipment to secure a contract, and the need for a contract to secure financing to procure this equipment is a vicious circle that IHC aims to help break by having new equipment available from stock.
"In addition, we have experienced that standardisation, combined with extremely short delivery times, is a highly successful concept for our range of IHC Beaver® cutter suction dredgers. This enables us to achieve the combination of a high-quality product at a relatively low level of investment – and we are convinced that this also applies to the standard TSHD series."
The construction of the Easydredge™ 2700 is being carried out by IHC partner MTG Dolphin's shipyard in Varna, Bulgaria. It is responsible for the assembly process and will deliver the vessel in summer 2015.