Dubai: Nakheel awards EUR 2.5 billion contract to build new city on artificial island

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The Rotterdam-based Van Oord firm has been awarded a contract to build The Palm, Deira in Dubai. On this palm shaped artificial island a city is to be erected for 500,000 people to live, work and recreate. Client for the project is Dubai project developer Nakheel. The contract is valued at some EUR 2.5 billion and will take eight years to complete.

This is the third and largest land reclamation project in the shape of a palm in Dubai. The Palm, Deira is to be eighteen kilometres long, nine kilometres wide and its surface will measure 4,000 hectares. Building the project will involve 1 billion cubic metres of sand and 40 million tons of rock.

Van Oord is to deploy a staff of some 800, ten trailing suction hopper dredgers and three specially equipped rock dumping vessels.

The signing of the contract took place Monday morning in the presence of the Crown Prince of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum and Dutch Prime Minister J.P. Balkenende.

Van Oord has been operating in Dubai since 2001 and reclaimed amongst others Palm Jumeirah. Currently, Van Oord is executing the project of The World, an archipelago of reclaimed islands that form the map of the world and Deira Corniche, situated at the base of the new Palm Deira.