Subcon Wins Sino Iron Terminal Deal

Subcon has been awarded by Citic Pacific Mining (CPM) a contract for the design and supply of their scour systems for berth pocket stabilization at the Sino Iron Terminal at Port of Cape Preston.

“The larger vessel size and deeper berth pocket means increases in bow thruster and main propeller wash velocities pose a significant scour erosion risk to the existing breakwater rock armor,” said Subcon in its release.

CPM approached Subcon to design, manufacture and supply a retro fit, low to no maintenance, high performance scour protection solution to protect the breakwater at the location of the vessel’s bow thruster and main propeller as well as shield the seafloor at the toe of the embankment.

Subcon is currently fabricating a total of 203 scour protection mattresses at its Karratha facility.

“The design includes a combination of our CoastMattTM and plastic mould articulated concrete mattress products,” said Subcon.

The mattresses incorporate an industry first superduplex stainless steel rope to achieve the low maintenance requirement in the highly corrosive environment.

Port of Cape Preston

CPM exports a magnetite concentrate via its a purpose-built terminal at Port of Cape Preston which is located approximately 60 kilometers south-west of Dampier.

The existing facility was built to accommodate a trans-shipping method of transporting the magnetite concentrate which entailed loading the material onto multiple hopper barges at the terminal berth before the barges were towed out and the ore discharged into a larger ocean going vessel waiting offshore for shipping to buyers.

To increase the material throughput of the terminal, CPM has decided to utilize a larger, self-discharging, self-propelled vessel for trans-shipping.

Preliminary enabling works to facilitate this change were conducted at the terminal earlier this year which consisted of dredging the existing berth, removing existing stop dolphin and upgrading vessel moorings.