Boskalis and Van Oord have been awarded a dredging contract worth approximately $570 million (€500 million) for the expansion of the Port of Luleå in Sweden.
The contract was awarded by the Swedish Maritime Administration and the Port of Luleå and will be executed by a joint venture between the two companies, with the contract value split equally.
Under the contract, the joint venture will deepen the port's fairway and harbor basin to accommodate vessels with a draft of up to 14.7 meters and a cargo capacity of up to 85,000 tons, compared with the current capacity of 45,000 tons.
Work is scheduled to begin in the spring of 2027 and continue during the ice-free seasons until before mid-August 2030. The project includes dredging approximately 14 million cubic meters of material, with part of the dredged material to be reused for land reclamation for a new deepwater port area.
Boskalis said a range of specialized equipment, including trailing suction hopper dredgers, backhoe dredgers, grab dredgers and drill and blast platforms, will be deployed. Environmental mitigation measures will include silt screens, bubble curtains, environmental buckets, turbidity monitoring and dredging techniques intended to minimize environmental impact.
Boskalis and Van Oord previously carried out preparatory dredging works at the Port of Luleå in 2024, removing approximately 1.5 million cubic meters of sediment, hard moraine soils and boulders.