Six Construct, a subsidiary of the Besix Group and one of the largest Belgian construction companies operating in the Middle East, has announced the completion of the expansion project for the gabbro terminal in Mesaieed for Qatar Primary Materials Company (QPMC).

To support the new, streamlined supply chain, Six Construct was responsible for building the auxiliary infrastructure, such as substations and weigh bridges, and installing the electromechanical equipment, said a statement from the company.

Within the first few months of the project, Six Construct was also awarded two additional 33 kV substations, which feeds the main project under a separate EPC (engineering, procurement and construction) contract.

The project, which was completed in a consortium with Danish group FLSMidth, a global engineering company supplying one-source plants, systems and services to the cement and minerals industries, will help QPMC double the capacity of the terminal, said the statement.

The replacement of the current operation system (4,000 daily rotations) with a state-of-the-art conveyor system is set to boost the terminal’s annual turnover to an impressive 30 million tonnes of aggregate, stated the key unit of Belgian construction group Besix.

Frederic Brunelle, the project director of Six Contruct, said: "The overall concept was to keep the existing offloading cranes, whilst optimising their maximum capacity by removing the trucking operations which was the main bottleneck of the process."

“In order to achieve this major upgrade, the company started work on building a conveyor system taking the material directly from the crane and transporting it at a speed of 3 m/s to the stockyard, and finally discharging it through a ‘stacker’ on a stockpile,” he explained.

Each ‘stacker’, weighing 260 tonnes, travels on a 900-m-long rail and piles the materials up to 20 m high. The total process allows material to be stored from the vessel to the stockpile in approximately 25 minutes and replaces up to 4,000 daily truck rotations in the berth, while more than doubling the current output of the existing cranes, stated Brunelle.

The further distribution of the gabbro is then improved through the installation of 12 weighbridges and an integrated management system, he added.

Valery Paquier, the resident manager, Six Construct Qatar, said: "Although we have now completed construction works of the project, we, with a partner, are also being considered to assist the client with the initial operation and maintenance of the gabbro terminal."
 
“Not only is this a true testament of our company’s good client relations, but it also highlights our ambitions as a group to be able to cover the complete infrastructure lifecycle of a project. Solid asset management is becoming a cornerstone in the diverse offerings of Besix, and we are very proud of the range of services we are able to offer as a company,” added Paquier.-TradeArabia News Service