First phase of Yangtze Canal widening done, phase two starts

The first phase of the Yangtze Canal widening project in the Netherlands has been completed, Van Oord, part of the contractor consortium together with Hakkers and De Klerk, said.

The consortium has delivered a new tugboat quay with twelve berths and shore power facilities. To facilitate this, the Yangtze Canal was widened by 500 metres along its southern side.

The contractor consortium has now commenced work on the second phase of the project: the construction of 1,450 metres of quay wall with twenty new inland shipping berths, including shore power facilities. The successful completion of the first phase and the swift start of the second phase highlight the strong collaboration within the contractor consortium and with the Port of Rotterdam Authority, Van Oord said.

The largest container vessels sail through the Yangtze Canal to and from the APMT 2 and RWG terminals in the Prinses Amaliahaven. Both terminals are currently expanding their capacity. As a result, traffic in the Yangtze Canal is expected to increase significantly in the near future, making it necessary to create additional space for the safe passage of increasingly larger vessels.

To achieve this, the navigational channel (at seabed level) of the Yangtze Canal will be widened along its entire length over the coming years. Once the project has been completed, the Yangtze Canal – and therefore access to the Maasvlakte – will be ready to safely and efficiently accommodate the next generation of container vessels currently under development.

Following the completion of the first phase, work on the second phase began immediately. This phase involves the construction of 1,450 metres of quay wall west of the existing Antarctica Quay, creating 20 additional inland shipping berths alongside the 10 existing berths. A heavy load zone will also be constructed to facilitate the one-off transhipment of goods or specific materials.

The inland shipping berths along the quay wall will have a Nautically Guaranteed Depth (NGD) of NAP -6.80 metres. To widen the navigational channel and create the new inland shipping berths, 1.4 million cubic metres of sand will be dredged and reused for land reclamation on Maasvlakte 2. These works will enable two-way traffic for container vessels of up to 24,000 TEU.

The upper section of the new quay wall will be constructed using approximately 10,000 m³ of geopolymer concrete. This material contains no cement and reduces CO₂ emissions by around 50 per cent compared with conventional concrete. In this way, the project supports the Port of Rotterdam Authority’s ambition to further enhance the sustainability of port infrastructure construction and maintenance.

The Port of Rotterdam Authority manages approximately 80 kilometres of quay walls and 200 kilometres of embankments. In the coming years, further investments will be made in new and replacement quay walls, with geopolymer concrete expected to be used increasingly often.