A new floating berth facility at Arrium’s Whyalla port in Southern Australia was needed to help improve the efficiency of Svitzer’s portion of the overall supply chain for Arrium’s mining and Whyalla Steelworks operations. The aim was to reduce crew change delays and to refuel the tugs within breaks in transhipment and harbour towage.

Beckett Rankine was asked by Marine Design Consultants to design three concrete berthing pontoons and one steel pontoon supporting a linkspan, cargo handling crane and tug fuelling facility. The concrete pontoons had to be built on site as Whyalla is a remote mining town and there was no suitable launch facility.

A further challenge was the requirement to secure the facility without any piles as there was no floating piling rig available. Our solution was to space the new pontoons off a pair of existing stub jetties and then secure the pontoons back with mooring chains to shore bollards.