Dutch shipbuilding group Damen Shipyards has started construction on a new offshore diamond mining vessel for a unit of De Beers in Namibia.
">This follows the awarding of a contract by Debmarine Namibia for Damen to build a new crawler diamond recovery vessel for offshore operations in Namibia.
At 177 metres long, the new vessel will be slightly larger than the current largest vessel in the Debmarine Namibia fleet. Constructed from a Marin Teknikk design, the MT 6027 will be the most technologically advanced marine diamond recovery vessel in the world.
The new opportunity is one of several generated by Damen’s shipyard in Mangalia, Romania which has the largest capacity of all the company’s yards.
“So far, Damen’s newbuild focus has mainly been on standardisation and in-house or own design vessels, along with various types of support and service vessels built for the offshore market,” said Damen sales director: offshore, Ruud van der Stroom.
Debmarine Namibia operates the largest offshore mine in the world, working at a water depth of between 90 and 150 metres off the south west coast of Namibia.
De Beers Marine (South Africa) will construct the mission equipment in South Africa in parallel with the vessel construction. Once the vessel is delivered by Damen, it will sail to South Africa where the mission equipment will be integrated into the vessel by De Beers Marine.
