Year round coastal protection

Over the years, Boskalis has been involved in maintaining and reinforcing much of the Dutch coast with a significant number of trailing suction hopper dredgers.

The North Sea beaches of the Netherlands are maintained with some 12 million cubic meters of sand every year.

Other countries bordering the North Sea, such as Germany and the United Kingdom, also need millions of cubic meters of extra sand to protect their coastal areas. In short: coastal defense work on this small part of the world carries on throughout the year.

Boskalis conducted several sand nourishment operations in the Netherlands in 2023. Sand was first deposited on the western beach of the island of Texel and the foreshore near Noordwijk and Wassenaar.

After that, extra sand was deposited in the Dutch province of Zeeland (Breezand, Onrustpolder) and the Wadden islands of Texel (on the eastern side) and Ameland. At the end of the year, nourishment work on the Vlieland-Texel-Bergen-Egmond cluster was still in full swing.

All of these projects are part of the four-year Coastline Maintenance program of the client, Rijkswaterstaat (the Dutch Directorate General for Public Works and Water Management).

Learn more about these projects in the latest issue of the Creating New HORIZONS magazine.