Significant dredgers of 2010

Stationary plain suction dredgers as used for the mining of sand and gravel are not often part of the yearly coverage of significant dredgers in DPC.
Last year however, a few interesting dredgers of this type have been built, interesting by the fact that they mark the success of a relatively young dredger construction company.
This company is IDRECO GmbH from Varsselder in the Netherlands, which in 2007 has started as a trading company, subsequently has picked the construction and delivery of dredger parts, mainly pumps, and in 2008 has built its first complete dredgers.
While the company IDRECO is new in the dredging industry, its shareholder and director Mr. Wim Snippe isn’t.
Already 30 years ago, he was active in sand mining in the Netterden Group with eight sand and gravel plants not far from Varsselder in the eastern part of the Netherlands..
Inspired by the technique of the dredgers used for this activity, he shifted to the construction of dredgers some ten years ago with the company Adreba, which was a partnership of three and comprised amongst others Achenbach Pumps and Bagema from Harderwijk.
During a tough period for the dredging industry, in 2003, the curtain dropped for a part of Adreba and Mr. Wim Snippe sold the dredger activities to Bagema and withdraw from building dredgers for a few years.
Already in 2007 however, he picked up activities for the dredging industry again under the name IDRECO, first as a trading company and later as builder and provider of dredging parts.
In fact, when the company Bagema was declared bankrupt in 2009, IDRECO took over the insolvent’s inventory including the intellectual properties of Bagema’s products.
This decision soon led to an overwhelming demand for dredging parts, mainly pumps, by former clients of Adreba and Bagema.
IDRECO realised the importance of complying to this demand and succeeded in setting up an efficient production and delivery line that led to high quality products and many satisfied customers.
This success was such that soon the question popped up if IDRECO couldn’t built and deliver entire dredgers.
Almost immediately after the decision was taken to go ahead with this, the first orders were booked and in the meantime, IDRECO has already completed six units.
The first dredger (1) was delivered to Peene Kies GmbH in Germany, who also bought a second one (2) .
This is a plain suction dredger equipped with an IDRECO 350 dredge pump and a 400 kW engine.
It has a maximum dredging depth of 18 meter and an average production volume of 1800 m3/h and 650 tons of sand and gravel.
In April 2009, the third one (3) was delivered to the company Granulats Vicat in France.
This dredger is called the Belle de Joux and is equipped with an IDRECO 400 pump and two engines, one of 355 kW and one of 160 kW.
It has a production volume of 1850 m3/h and 700 tons of sand an Gravel with 70 % of gravel and can reach a dredging depth of 18 meter.
The Belle de Joux is being deployed by Vicat to dredge sand in a mining pit north of Villefranche-sur Saône, where an annual sand production of over 700,000 tons is realised.
The fourth dredger (4) was delivered to Kieswerk Grotendonk, a part of the Netterden group.
Same concept as the ones for Peene Kies, but with a 500 kW motor on the dredge pump, pumping more gravel and on a longer distance.

The fifth unit (5) is an ISD 300 suction dredger that was delivered in September 2010 to the Polish company KGHM Polska Miedž in Lubin.
This dredger is also of the catamaran type, similar to the other dredgers build by IDRECO.
It has his own 6 KV trafo with a frequency control for all the engines.
KGHM Polska Miedž is Poland’s biggest copper producer and is using the new dredger to dredge sand for its mines.
The sixth and largest plain suction dredger built by IDRECO in 2010 is the Susan.
This dredger has been built for Glaser Sand und Kies (6) a part of Holcim AG, one of the world’s leading suppliers of cement and aggregates.
The Susan has an production volume of 1,500 m3/h and is able to reach a dredging depth of 60 meter.
Holcim will use the Susan in one of its mining pits near Karlsruhe in Germany.
Like the most dredgers built by IDRECO it is an electric.
However, new development is done on diesel driven dredgers, IDRECO will show this in a short time.

In the meantime, IDRECO has obtained more demands for the construction and delivery of new dredgers.
Besides plain suction dredgers, the company also has cutter suction dredgers in its program.

One of the main points of the IDRECO dredgers is that they are fully controlled by the DredgerControl® system in combination with the DredgerNaut® system which tells you where you are, how deep and in which way you are dredging.
Furthermore all the dredgers built by IDRECO are fully automatic, sometimes complete without human interference on remote from the shore.