Second Marine Aggregate Dredger 3500 enters service

General – Dredging

The second vessel of Damen’s new Marine Aggregate Dredger (MAD) 3500 class has now completed her sea trials.

As of January 2022, she has entered service with her owner, Hanson UK, a leading supplier of building materials to the UK market.

The design team at Damen sought input from experienced operators in the sector as well as from its own repair yards, which have been maintaining dredgers for many years, and its dredging mission equipment production subsidiary. These, together with its own ship design and building capabilities, make Damen a one-stop-shop for all things dredging. As a result, while the new design is similar in size to its twentieth-century equivalents, the MAD 3500 is a completely new class that is a quantum leap ahead, both in the quantity of product it can carry (20% more) and operational costs per tonne.

The Hanson Thames began her build at Damen Shipyards Galati at the end of 2019 and, while being based on the original MAD 3500 design, she benefited from the experience already gained from an earlier build and had some adjustments to meet her own particular operational requirements.

Damen has always maintained the ethos of combining standardisation where possible with customisation where required, and the MAD 3500 class can be modified to meet the needs of individual operators without any loss in performance.

Original Source: https://ocean-energyresources.com/2022/02/07/second-marine-aggregate-dredger-3500-enters-service/