Speaking at the ceremony, Mark Darren Williams, fleet engineering manager for CEMEX, said: “For CEMEX UK Marine, their management and personnel, today is a milestone in our company history. This new ship represents a significant investment and the first new vessel both in the CEMEX fleet and that of the UK aggregate industry in over 20 years.
“Today we convert a lot of hard work, technical drawings, calculations, ideas, energetic discussions and exchange of point-of-views into a physical floating object, by the highly skilled women and men of Galati and Mangalia.”
The CEMEX Go Innovation is the first of Damen’s new Marine Aggregate Dredger (MAD) class. The MAD 3500 vessel is the result of close co-operation between CEMEX and Damen and represents the first of a new generation of efficient and economical dredgers. It is designed to extract aggregates from the seabed at depths up to 55m, including in the challenging conditions experienced in the North Sea.
The CEMEX Go Innovation has been developed to offer major environmental savings while ensuring safety, high performance and sustainability. The result is a dredger that will have a 25% increased capacity, nearly double the dredging depth and a discharge rate increase of 20%.
Further design features include optimal balance between payload and efficiency, overall length of 103.5m, a deadweight of just under 7,000 tonnes and a maximum loaded speed of approximately 12 knots.
Following its launch, CEMEX Go Innovation will complete its fitting out with commissioning due to begin at the end of the year, and delivery expected in the early spring of 2020.
Laurence Dagley, managing director of CEMEX Materials UK Southern, commented: ‘It was very exciting to see our state-of-the-art dredger and participate in the traditional launch ceremony with Damen.
“This is a groundbreaking ship that leads the industry thanks to the major environmental savings that it offers, its increased capacity and dredging depth, and its safety-enhancing external pipework. We look forward to the CEMEX Go Innovation arriving in the UK and beginning its work early next year.”
Kurt Cowdery, director of CEMEX Marine, said: ‘CEMEX GO Innovation is a state-of-the-art vessel that will allow us to further enhance our Marine profile and capability in both the UK and Europe. We continue to stay ahead of our competitors and are maximizing the opportunities available to us.”
“The co-operation between Damen and CEMEX UK Marine has been really excellent,” added Damen’s Joppe Neijens, sales manager dredging for north, west and south Europe. ‘It has been a very smooth process and we have built the vessel together, using the original Damen MAD concept as the basis for a vessel optimized to meet the needs of CEMEX.
“They challenged us to meet their requirements and as a joint team we made it happen. This new dredger will differentiate itself from the current fleet and set a new standard in the industry. As such, the CEMEX Go Innovation represents the start of a new era.”
