NATIONAL BUILDING

The Dutch have long been experts in reclaiming land from the waves, but their services have never been in greater demand around the world.

SMART INVESTORS BUY LAND. BUT THE OIL-RICH MAGNATES OF THE MIDDLE EAST do something even smarter – they build their own land. Not content with creating The World – a €3bn (£2.3bn), 9km long artificial archipelago of 300 privately owned country-shaped islands that resemble a map of the earth – developer Nakheel is putting into motion its big-bang The Universe project, with islands in the shape of the sun, moon and the planets. It’s the latest in a string of huge-scale pleasure island projects in the Gulf. Instead of snapping up chunks of Mayfair or Manhattan, the oil sheikhs of Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Oman are investing their money offshore – literally off their own shore. And many of these artificial islands are being built by Royal Boskalis Westminster and Van Oord, sand dredging and land reclamation experts from the Netherlands.

Last year was a record breaker for both companies: Boskalis, which is headquartered in Papendrecht, saw turnover rise to €1.8bn (£1.4bn) and its order book swell to more than €3.3bn (£2.5bn). Van Oord, of Rotterdam, racked up a turnover of €1.6bn (£1.2bn) in 2007 with net profits rising by 85% compared with the previous year. Fuelled by a surging interest in these high profile projects, Boskalis and Van Oord are the crown princes of a Dutch land reclamation cluster that encompasses ship and equipment builders IHC Holland and VUYK Engineering, consulting engineering firm Royal Haskoning and technology university Delft, which runs a dredging engineering research group. Dutch architects are gaining a reputation for island building too. Erick van Egeraat has designed a 250hectare Russia-shaped luxury island (complete with rivers that mimic Russia’s own) to be created in the Black Sea near Sochi by 2014, the year when the city hosts the Winter Olympics.

“Many countries have their own dredging fl eets,” says Boskalis spokesman Roel Berends, “but all the expertise and innovation is coming from this part of Europe.”

Of course it’s not quite a level playing field. The Dutch have had a head start, given that almost half of the Netherlands is below sea level and much of the rest is threatened by coastal or river fl ooding. There’s a saying: “God created the world, but the Dutch created the Netherlands”, and reclaiming land along the North Sea has been a work in progress for centuries. In the 1930s, work was completed on a mammoth 32km dyke that closed off the Zuiderzee from the North Sea and allowed 1,650km2 of land to be drained. More recently, the Delta project, one of the world’s biggest construction schemes, was undertaken to raise dykes, close sea estuaries and build a huge storm-surge barrier, a project that was finally finished in 1997 after taking nearly 50 years.

It all adds up to a level of expertise highly valued outside the Netherlands. United States government officials sought advice from Dutch experts after fl oods devastated New Orleans in 2005, and Dutch companies have been involved in most large-scale coastal developments worldwide. Boskalis, for example, has refined techniques learned during the Zuiderzee and Delta projects to help reclaim land for Hong Kong’s airport, and is now working on Oman’s €1.1bn (£800m) Wave resort project, another €1.1bn (£800m) contract to develop a new port in Abu Dhabi, and a €300m (£230m) job deepening the shipping channels of Port Phillip in Melbourne. Together with Van Oord, Boskalis has won a €1bn (£700m) contract to extend the port of Rotterdam, but the interest around the world is so high that the Dutch portion of Boskalis’ turnover now stands at less than 15%.

Aside from the attention that a large-scale land reclamation project attracts, there are also sound practical reasons for opting to create new land rather than occupy the existing dry stuff. The world’s population is anticipated to grow from 6bn to 9bn people in the next 50 years, many of them living in cities next to shores. Every reclamation project is different, but according to Van Oord, rarely has the cost of reclaimed land exceeded €240 (£184) per square metre, a fraction of the cost of existing land. Add to that a forecast of rising sea levels, and the demand for land reclamation services – and Dutch expertise – is only going to rise.

“The accident in Congo was a rare incident. Dredging is not dangerous per se,” says Berends. “However, as in any heavy-duty equipment industry, there are operational risks that need to be managed with safety measures.”

Ongoing dredging operations keep the world’s commercial routes open, but it can disturb aquatic ecosystems, often with adverse impacts. Dredge spoils may contain toxic chemicals that can contaminate the area in which they are deposited. It means that dredging companies must now advise clients on how to measure and minimise environmental impact, and the big companies are keen to talk about “building with nature” on projects that attempt to incorporate environmental and economic benefits.

Yet environmental protests remain a feature of most projects. According to Berends, projects are often put on hold because of environmental objections. “It’s very difficult for our industry. Sometimes it takes years for a project to become a contract,” he admits. “In the case of the Rotterdam project it has taken 20 years.”

The Maasvlakte 2 project is now ready to begin in Rotterdam, and will eventually provide an additional 2,000 hectares of land at Europe’s busiest port. Yet it remains the case that the Netherlands has had few domestic reclamations to crow about since the Delta works. To kick-start a new round of developments, Innovation Platform, a think tank that advises Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende has proposed a radical package of projects that include a tulip-shaped energy island in the North Sea that would be home to a sustainable power plant, recreation facilities, fish farms and a port.

Innovation Platform has also recommended further coastal protection schemes off South Holland, in the Zeeland Delta, and the IJsselmeer-Afsluitdijk. Critics say the plans will be prohibitively expensive and harm delicate ecosystems, but Innovation Platform project leader Eric Schellekens says it’s an opportunity to trumpet Dutch water management skills and help another 80 or so Dutch companies in the water, managerial, scientific and financial sectors join Boskalis and Van Oord as world leaders.

“We have plenty of expertise in land reclamation,” says Schellekens, “but we need to do more to integrate new ideas into these projects, such as incorporating new energy supplies and adding docking stations. It’s a showcase for Dutch innovation that we can export to many countries. There are around 100 deltas around the world that will experience the same issues as us.”

DON’T FORGET THE BELGIANS

TWO OF THE FOUR MAJOR PLAYERS IN dredging and land reclamation are Dutch but the other two are Belgian: Jan De Nul, which has its head office in Hofstade-Aalst and DEME, based in Antwerp. “The Dutch have the reputation in this area because they make more noise about it,” says Géry Vandewalle, director of Jan De Nul’s international division. “The Belgium coastline is only 65km long, so most of our expertise in dredging and land reclamation has been gained overseas.”

Jan De Nul’s recent projects have included the building of Dubai’s The Palm, at Jumeirah, Jebel Ali and Deira and improvements to the Panama Canal. According to Vandewalle, future projects are likely to include the building of islands further out to sea, possibly for the purpose of depositing material such as hazardous waste.

The dredging firms are locked in a “space race” to build even bigger jumbo hoppers that can dredge sand at greater depths and carry it longer distances. But it is Jan De Nul which has ordered the biggest yet – two mega trailing suction hopper dredgers, Cristobal Colon and Leiv Eriksson, which are under construction at Sestao in Spain for delivery next year. Each will have a hopper capacity of 46,000m3 with suction pipes that can dredge to a depth of 155m.

WORDS BY IAN WYLIE