Hamburg, Germanies largest port, is dependent on the fairway along the river Elbe. This fariway runs from the Elbes river mouth at the North Sea, upstream to the entrance of the harbour of Hamburg. The Elbe Ducker project is a critical infrastructure project aimed at deepening the Elbe river to enable large container vessels to access the port of Hamburg. In order to lower the fairway  the old pipelines crossing the river had to be removed.  Bezemer Dordrecht was awarded this part of the project scope and performed this challenging pipe pull with one of its 800-ton linear winches.  

Pulling without blocking the Elbe  

One of the key challenges in the project was to ensure that the Elbe was not blocked during the pipe pull operation. The empty gas pipelines were filled with water to prevent them from floating. This added weight, combined with the long time the pipelines spent on the riverbed, required a long and constant high pulling force to be applied to the pipelines. 

Pulling 1600 mTon using a linear winch 

To achieve a successful pipe pull, our engineering team designed a specially designed 1.600 mTon snatch block. This snatch block allowed the simultaneous pulling of all three connected pipes while increasing the pulling capacity. During the actual pulling operation, the winch’s pulling force was gradually increased to overcome the drag from the seabed and to prevent damage to the wire and other equipment while extracting the pipelines from the riverbed. 

By reeving, a pull of 1.600 metric ton was created, pulling the three pipelines simultaneously over a distance of 1100 meters.  The old pipes were successfully removed without compromising the accessibility of the port of Hamburg. Above all, removal off the pipes resulted in the needed additional space for successful navigation of the new generation of large ships. The project shows the efficiency and effectiveness of linear winches in challenging marine engineering projects and demonstrates that with the right team and equipment, even the most challenging infrastructure projects can be safely and successful completed.