Alexandria, Egypt – Egypt is a maritime country that has a remarkable geographical location on the junction of three continents and 2,000 km of coastline on the Mediterranean and the Red Sea which has developed its connection with the foreign world since ancient times. The Egyptian government has planned to develop six main ports to accommodate the growing demand on the seaborne trade – and BAUER Spezialtiefbau GmbH, through its local subsidiary BAUER EGYPT S.A.E., is involved in four of them.
The city of Alexandria has over 5 million inhabitants and is the second largest city in Egypt after Cairo. The Port of Alexandria is one of the oldest ports in the world and the main port of the country. It handles about 60% of the country’s exports and imports. Alexandria Port is located on the west verge of the Nile Delta between the Mediterranean Sea and Lake Mariut. It consists of two harbors separated by a peninsula which is T-shaped. The shallow east harbor is not navigable by large vessels. The west harbor is used for commercial shipping. A plan has been elaborated to expand Alexandria Port to enable more cargo being handled. The new “Multi-Purpose Terminal 55/62”, to be constructed as an expansion to the Alexandria port, will occupy an area of approximately 56 ha which shall be reclaimed and improved.
BAUER EGYPT S.A.E. was awarded by the main contractors EDECS and GIECO the deep foundation works of a semi-rectangular quay wall with a volume of 225.897 m3, consisting of a front diaphragm wall, two rows of middle piles and a rear row of barrettes. The front diaphragm wall will be 1.2 m thick over a length of 1,500 m and 1.0 m thick over a length of 1,025 m. The 1,326 middle piles and the 660 rear barrettes will have a depth of 39 m, just like the front diaphragm wall.
In addition to four trench cutters, two Bauer drilling rigs of the type BG 28 are in use. The vertical elements are planned to be executed parallelly by the means of two mega mixing plants located initially on the north and south sides of the wall covering a 200 m radius around each of them. The mixing plants will be shifted along the quay wall as the work progresses. Construction work executed by Bauer Egypt began on September 28, 2020 and is expected to take a total of ten months.