Boskalis-Van Oord JV Secures $580M Contract for Dredging Works at Sweden’s Lulea Port

The Swedish Maritime Administration (Sjöfartsverket) and the Port of Luleå have awarded a SEK5.7 billion (US$580 million) contract for the remaining dredging works under Sweden’s Project Malmporten, the largest dredging project ever undertaken in the country.

Malmporten Dredging Contractors (MDC), a joint venture between Boskalis and Van Oord, will dredge approximately 40 kilometres of fairway and the harbour basin at Luleå in northern Sweden. The work is scheduled to begin in spring 2027 and finish before mid-August 2030.

The project will deepen and widen the approaches to Luleå, allowing the port to receive vessels with draughts of up to 14.7 metres. Boskalis said the expanded fairway and basin will be able to accommodate ships carrying as much as 85,000 tonnes, compared with the port’s current capacity of handling 45,000-tonne vessels.

“With the contract now in place, Sweden’s largest dredging project can move into its next major implementation phase,” Erik Eklund, Director-General of Sjöfartsverket, said.

Approximately 14 million cubic metres of sand, silt, clay, moraine soils, boulders and fresh rock will be removed by the joint venture.

The contractors will use several types of dredgers—trailing suction hopper, backhoe and grab dredgers—as well as drill-and-blast platforms. Because the Gulf of Bothnia is covered by ice for five to six months of the year, work will be limited to the ice-free seasons.

The environmental measures will include turbidity monitoring, environmental buckets, bubble curtains, silt screens and dredging methods intended to limit disturbance. Some of the recovered material will be reused for land reclamation associated with a new deep-water port area.

MDC previously completed preparatory work at Malmporten in 2024, removing about 1.5 million cubic metres of sediment, hard moraine and large boulders.