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WORK ON dredging Lerwick’s north harbour to a depth of nine metres is set to start next week, creating up to 30 local jobs over the next eight months.

The £12 million project will be carried out by Westminster Dredging Company, one of the world's largest dredging contractors.

It will be the biggest project ever undertaken at the port, allowing large ships to enter the industrialised north of the harbour.
Starting next week the large, self-contained, trailer suction dredger Waterway will spend around a month removing the softer seabed material by sucking it into an onboard hopper.

It will then move to the reclamation site where the material will either be pumped ashore through a temporary pre-laid pipeline, or blown ashore if conditions are right.

The back-hoe dredger Manu Pekka will then use its large excavator plant to dig out weathered rock, as well as fresh rock pre-blasted by a ‘drill and blast’ barge.

The back-hoe will load the material into two self-propelled hopper barges for delivery to the reclamation site where it will be dumped or, to assist placement, some may be trucked to the site. The Manu Pekka will operate from mid May to September.

In an overlapping phase, the ‘drill and blast’ barge will be operating from mid-June to August.

Source: Shetland Marine News