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BAM consortium sign €750m contract to build 427m-long canal lock

A BAM joint venture has signed a €750m contract to construct a lock in Terneuzen, in the province of Zeeland, in the southwest of the Netherlands.

The Sassevaart joint venture consists of BAM, Belgian dredging firm DEME and Belgian contractor Algemene Aannemingen Van Laere.

The contract was awarded by the Flemish-Dutch Scheldt Commission, a partnership between the Netherlands and Flanders for jointly managing the Scheldt estuary.

The Terneuzen lock complex connects the Western Scheldt with the Ghent-Terneuzen Canal, which is part of the Rotterdam-Paris inland waterway route and one of the busiest navigated canals in Europe.

The new lock will be is 427m long, 55m wide and will have a depth of 16m.

It will be built within the current lock complex, between the Western and Eastern locks, removing the current Middle Lock.

The joint venture will start enabling works by the end of 2017, and the lock is expected to be operational in 2022.

Construction is expected to take 60 months, during which time 300,000 cubic metres of concrete will be poured, 32,000 tonnes of reinforcing steel will put in place, 10,000 tonnes of steel used for building the lock gates and bridges and 50,000 tonnes of steel for piling and steel sheet walls.

Construction will be followed by a 24-month maintenance period.  

The project has been awarded a European subsidy under the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF).

Image courtesy of BAM

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