The 54-acre site, which ABP and its main contractor GRAHAM Lagan Construction Group Joint Venture (JV) are preparing for Siemens’ offshore wind turbine manufacturing facility, is being transformed in
Hull’s biggest engineering project since the port was built. The enabling works undertaken by ABP and their contractors are worth £150 million.

The dock infill has now been completed, with one million cubic metres of sand pumped into the dock to fill one third of the water area. Excess sand was stored during this process to be used for the 7.5 hectare reclaim, which will become the new quayside and component storage areas, and this is now being pumped into position around the existing timber sheds and jetties, which will be demolished in the coming weeks.

Marine piling for the new quay wall is almost complete and piling for the anchor wall and roll on-roll off ramp is continuing.

The JV has now taken control of the east side of the site to begin preparatory works for the 25,000 square metre service building. Five substations, which will supply 6MVA to the site, are also being built to supply the new facility with electricity.

ABP Director Humber Simon Bird is pleased with the progress being made on site.

He said: “It’s fantastic to see the site beginning to take shape and it’s testament to the hard work of the ABP project team, the main contractor and all of those organisations and individuals involved in the enabling works that the project is on schedule and Siemens’ facility will be operational by the end of 2016.”

With a published capacity of 19,224 TEU, Oscar-class vessels are the world’s current record holders in container carrying capacity. These ULCS are 396m-long, and require a depth of 16m.

“This is the only port in Sweden with a water depth to handle vessels this large”, noted APM Terminals Gothenburg Vessel Planner Peter Hägg, who has since early December been preparing the operational details of the MSC Maya’s arrival.

The MSC Maya will be in port for only a total of 35 hours. A total of 50 port staff are assigned to work three shifts to move containers onto and off of the vessel. The logistics have been planned down to the smallest detail. Crane operations, and container movements in the yard performed by straddle carriers are part of the optimized operations to ensure maximum productivity during the vessel call window.

The final vessel loading and unloading planning was completed 24 hours before arrival, to take account weather and wind conditions, as well as the exact arrival time of the ship at the port. In January 2016, APM Terminals Gothenburg will host the MSC Zoe, the next of the Oscar-class vessels entering into the MSC fleet.

APM Terminals Gothenburg began operations in January of 2012, after being announced the winner of the concession bidding process for the existing Skandia Container Terminal concession in October 2011. The company is investing USD 115 million in the facility to establish Gothenburg as a deep-water hub for Scandinavia and the Baltic area. Gothenburg’s overall container throughput was 837,000 TEU in 2014, with APM Terminals Gothenburg handling 759,000 TEU, or approximately half of all Swedish container traffic for the year.