On the eve of the holiday season, on December 30, NIBULON started the second stage of dredging operations specified by the project on the navigable path of the Southern Buh River.
The company says it started the operations from the largest sandbar of the Southern Buh River – Kostiantynivka sandbar.
This stage provides for dredging of Kostiantynivka sandbar to 2.5 m. The total length of the dredging area in the area of the sandbar comprises 2 km. In general, the working depth of the river’s navigable path will reach up to 2.5 m.
The operations will be performed by the unique self-propelled high-capacity Mykolaivets dredger, which has become very popular from the moment of putting into operation. After experimental dredging of the rocky bottom in the area of the most dangerous rapids of the Dnipro River carried out in Kamianske town in November (Dnipropetrovsk region), the dredger carried out a large amount of work on the berth of the company’s shipbuilding and repair yard, where the slipway is being reconstructed, as well as in the place of construction of the new complex for transshipment of grain and oilseeds as part of NIBULON’s transshipment terminal in Mykolaiv. The company doesn’t waste time. Mykolaivets will start complex operations on the Southern Buh River and will start testing the modern technique.
Due to warm winter, dredging will be performed every fine day and must be completed before the start of spawning. Upon completion of the dredging on the Southern Buh River, the company plans to proceed to ambitious plans on the Dnipro River, in the area of construction of new transshipment terminals.
NIBULON’s cargo fleet operates underloaded by 20%. Thus, the second stage of the dredging operations will enable the company to load the non-self-propelled B2000 project vessels that were designed for operation on the Southern Buh River to their full load, thereby reducing the number of cargo trips and transportation costs. In addition, this will enable the company’s tugs and non-self-propelled vessels to perform other cargo trips, e. g. this will enable the company to perform 30 additional cargo trips from “Kremenchuts’ka” branch (Poltava region) and transport 120,000 tons of cargoes by water; this will remove 5 thousand trucks from the country’s roads.
The dredging of the Southern Buh River to 2.5 m will enable the company to launch more modern (as compared to Polissia passenger vessels that performed regular trips last year) Voskhod hydrofoils with higher speed and passenger capacity (77 passengers).
As a result of the dredging performed by NIBULON on its own and at its own expense, 134 km of the Southern Buh River became navigable. On August 24, 2016, the cargo fleet moved to Voznesensk for the first time in 25 years. Thus, only during navigation season of 2016, NIBULON’s shipping company performed 170 cargo trips along the Southern Buh River, having transported 300 thousand tons of grain and oilseeds. As a result, the company surpassed the best results of the Soviet period in terms of water transportation by 6 times and removed about 12.5 thousand trucks from the roads of Mykolaiv region.
In addition, due to dredging operations performed on the Southern Buh River, passenger transportation by river was revived. On May 13, NIBULON launched scheduled passenger transportation by the route Voznesensk – Kovalivka – Nova Odesa – Mykolaiv.