Van Oord announced it has accepted delivery of its new trailing suction hopper dredger (TSHD), Vox Apolonia, from Keppel Singmarine Pte Ltd shipyard in Singapore.
The newbuild is the second in a series of three new dual-fuel liquefied natural gas (LNG) fueled TSHDs being built for the Dutch dredging and marine services contractor.
The 10,500-cubic-meter-capacity Vox Apolonia and its sister vessels Vox Ariane and Vox Alexia, fall into the mid-class section of Van Oord’s TSHD fleet. The dual-fuel LNG capabilities help to reduce the carbon footprint of the three vessels as Van Oord works to make its fleet more sustainable and economical.
Maarten Sanders, new building manager at Van Oord, said, "The delivery of the Vox Apolonia is once again an important milestone in achieving our ambitions to lower our impact on climate change and be carbon neutral by 2050."
The new TSHDs are also equipped with a high degree of automation for their marine and dredging systems, as well as onboard data acquisition and integrated control system to enhance efficiency and operational cost savings. Each TSHD has one suction pipe with submerged e-driven dredge pump, two shore discharge dredge pumps, five bottom doors, a total installed power of 14,500 kW, and is able to accommodate 22 persons.
Vox Apolonia is being prepped to sail to the Netherlands, where it will perform dredging trials. Its christening is scheduled for March 2023 in Rotterdam.
Vox Ariane was christened in June 2022 and has already been deployed on several projects, while Vox Alexia remains under construction in Singapore.