Strukton, specialist construction company, will build a 1.8km immersed tunnel underneath the Scheldt River as part of a ring road around Antwerp in Belgium.
Strukton Immersion Projects, part of the Dutch engineering firm Strukton Civil, focuses on floatation, transport and immersion of tunnel elements and caissons. The company will develop eight tunnel elements for the Oosterweel connection. Financial details of the contract were not revealed.
The Oosterweel will connect the Expressweg (E34) near Blokkersdijk via a toll tunnel (the Oosterweeltunnel) underneath the Scheldt that will connect the Antwerp Ring Road at Merksem and Deurne.
The Scheldt Tunnel will consist of a land tunnel and an immersed tunnel. Each immersed element will be around 160m x 42m x 10m and a weigh about 60,000 tonnes. Tunnel elements will be built in the inner port of Zeebrugge and then towed to Antwerp via the North Sea and the Western Scheldt.
Lantis, as the client for the Oosterweel connection, awarded the contract for the complete tunnel project in mid-2020 to Tijdelijke Maatschap Combinatie Oosterweeltunnel – COTU. COTU is composed of the Belgian construction groups BESIX, BAM Contractors, DEME and JanDeNul. The contract value is €570 million, with a BAM Contractors’ share of 25 per cent.
Strukton Immersion Projects was awarded the contract by COTU for the floatation, mooring, immersion preparation and installation of the eight tunnel elements that likely will take place in 2024.
Strukton, which has more than 30 years of experience in the immersed tunnelling business, was involved in the immersion of 18 tunnel elements, each 180m long, in the four-lane 3.2km-long Busan-Geoje Fixed Link Project in South Korea. When it opened in 2010, it was the world’s deepest immersed roadway tunnel at 48m below mean water level.
