Boskalis and Van Oord have landed a €500m ($569m) dredging contract to expand Sweden’s Port of Luleå, a northern industrial gateway preparing for larger ships and heavier raw-material flows, according to Boskalis.
The contract was awarded by the Swedish Maritime Administration and the Port of Luleå, with the value split equally between the two Dutch contractors.
The joint venture will deepen the port’s fairway and harbour basin, enabling Luleå to handle vessels drawing up to 14.7 metres and carrying up to 85,000 tonnes of cargo. That is nearly double the current capacity of 45,000 tonnes.
Work is scheduled to start in spring 2027 and will be carried out during ice-free seasons, with completion due before mid-August 2030. The job covers the dredging of about 14m cubic metres of material, including sand, silt, clay, moraine soils, boulders and significant volumes of fresh rock. Some of the dredged material will be reused for land reclamation to support a new deepwater port area.
The equipment line-up includes trailing suction hopper dredgers, backhoe dredgers, grab dredgers and drill-and-blast platforms. Environmental protection measures include silt screens, bubble curtains, environmental buckets, turbidity monitoring and dredging techniques aimed at limiting impact.
Boskalis and Van Oord already know the site. In 2024, they carried out preparatory dredging in Luleå, removing about 1.5m cubic metres of sediment, hard moraine soils and large boulders typical of the northern Gulf of Bothnia.
The port expansion is tied to green industrial development in Norrbotten, including investments in fossil-free steel and sustainable energy. Boskalis links the project to demand for larger vessels with deeper draughts, raw-material exports from northern Sweden and Finland, sustainable steel production and renewable fuels.
Boskalis is a global services provider active in dredging, maritime infrastructure and maritime services, including coastal defence, riverbank protection, land reclamation, offshore energy infrastructure, ports, waterways, access channels, civil infrastructure, marine salvage and terminal services. The company has more than 400 vessels and floating equipment and more than 11,000 employees.