Dredging giant anticipates busy years in energy projects

PAPENDRECHT - Dredging giant Royal Boskalis Westminster NV plans on investing one billion euros in its fleet. Boskalis is also open to acquisitions which reinforce its position in its industry. They are not at the top of its priority list, however, as it is still busy integrating maritime service provider Smit, which it acquired in 2009. Boskalis is, alongside Belgian Jan de Nul, Belgian DEME and Dutch Van Oord, one of the biggest global dredging companies. Boskalis will concentrate on six regions in the next few years, Northwest Europe, Brazil, South and West Africa, the Middle East, Southeast Asia and Australia. Among other ventures, it plans to invest in a fallpipe vessel, and said it wants to expand further in Brazil by investing in new tug boats for its harbor towage and terminal services activities. Boskalis thinks the dredging sector could see about ten billion euros in new orders in the coming four years from the oil and gas industry, mainly due to a surge in investment in liquefied natural gas projects.