IHC Launches Van Oord CSD Athena
Today, having performed the official naming ceremony, the words of Mrs A.M. Van Oord-Groen, wife of Mr Drs J.G. Van Oord, former chairman of the board of directors and former commissioner of Van Oord, guided the cutter suction dredger (CSD) Athena from the slipway of the IHC Merwede yard in Kinderdijk, the Netherlands. Van Oord’s first self-propelled CSD boasts a maximum cutter power of 7,000 kW.
Able to perform at depths of up to 32.4 m, the 131.5m Athena is designed for unrestricted navigation. The newbuild is claimed to rank among the world’s Top3 of largest and most powerful self-propelled CSDs and is the largest one built to date in the Netherlands for a Dutch client. The Athena is equipped with two inboard dredge pumps of 5,000 kW each and a 5,000kW submerged dredge pump on the cutter ladder. The total installed power on board of the Athena amounts to 24,658 kW delivered by a triple engine diesel-electric setup, which enables the CSD to power her activities economically.
Claimed a world first for a dredger, the Athena is issued a Green Passport and Clean Ship Notation by Bureau Veritas. And the Athena might be Van Oord’s first self-propelled CSD, market prospects and expectations must be high. In December 2010, Van Oord announced it had ordered a second self-propelled CSD from IHC Dredgers. A true ‘sister’ to the Athena, she will be named the Artemis. Both are part of the EUR 2 billion 2007-2015 investment programme with a price tag of approximately EUR 200 million each.