The president of the Government of Cantabria, Ignacio Diego, attended at the beginning of the works for the increase in pumping of the Raos 1 pier of the port of Santander. During the visit he was accompanied by the president and director of the Port Authority of Santander, José Joaquín Martínez Sieso and Cristina López, respectively; Coo (Chief Operational Officer) by Noatum, Boris Wenzel; the director of Noatum Granles Santander, Víctor Conde; the chief of supply of coal, gas and environmental products and the head of Iberdrola coal purchases, José Simón Buela and Ignacio Aramburu, respectively, and the general and logistics directors of Solvay Torrelavega, Heinz Josef Welter and José Merino, respectively.
They were also responsible for the UTE, Dragados, Geocisa, Drace and Arruti awarded the works, including David Barrio, manager of the UTE; José Ignacio Campos, regional director of Dragados y Construcciones; Ramón Viñas, Director of Geo -Tecnia Works of Geocisa; Eloy Domínguez, director of Drace, and Javier Arruti, director of Arruti.
On the part of Typsa, a company awarded the technical assistance to the work management was Nestor Urrutxúa, director of Typsa. Finally, the APS Works director Alberto Rodríguez also attended.
During the visit, the Director of Infrastructure of the Port of Santander, José Luis Zataraín, explained to the attendees the details of the work that will be carried out in Raos 1.
The work
This complex performance aims to increase the draft of the pier 1 of Raos by 2 meters, from 13.00 meters to 15.00 meters, on an area of 50 meters wide by 285 meters long.
With this work the capacity of the current spring dedicated to the traffic of solid bulk, merchandise in general and containers will be increased, which will allow the attraction of ships of greater draft, specifically the most current among the so -called ‘Panamax’.
The port of Santander awarded the execution of these works in August of this year in 5,442,067 euros, and the deadline for its realization has been established in 9 months. For its part, the technical assistance to the management of the work was awarded in September also this year to the company TYPSA, techniques and projects, for a total of 149,536 euros.
The works, which will begin this week, will consist of the improvement of the foundation ground of the dock drawers, the dredging of the background and the overtaking of the bearing line. The first of the phases, to improve the land, aims to ensure the support zone of the dock before the variation of the dimension of the same. For this, the technique called ‘Jet Grouting’ will be used, which consists of injection in the field of cementing material through one or several jets at high speed. For this, a drilling of about 10-15 cm in diameter is performed on the dock wall until it reaches the end of said wall, and by the remaining hole a machine is introduced that is the one that injects the 'cement grout' to large speed, which produces the breakage and restructuring of the land, and the mixture of all materials. When hardening a very resistant column is achieved. This is the most complex part and the most expensive of the process, and represents around 80 percent of the cost of the work.
This process is carried out along the dock, building columns of 4 meters in diameter and between 13 and 18 meters high, which once set and hardened, allow the dredging of the bearing pit along almost all of the entire Raos alignment 1.
Finally, the advancement of the dock defenses will be carried out until they are aligned with the start of the new level of 15 meters.
After completing this work, and as part of this action, it is planned The modernization of the port of Santander, and the forecast is that the first studies on this work will begin throughout 2014.