The new split hopper barge, part of the dredging equipment of the Executive agency "Exploration and maintenance of the Danube river", has arrived in Ruse. The equipment, which is 59.5 meters long and 9.7 meters wide, was built at the ATG Giurgiu shipyard in Romania. Its maximum draft is 2.35 meters. The value of the barge is BGN 1,954,000 without VAT.
It is designed to load the dredged materials when deepening or correcting the river bottom in the critical sections of the Danube. Its delivery is part of the project “Modernization and optimization of the maintenance activities in the common BG-RO section of the Danube river through delivery of equipment”, co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund through the Operational Programme "Transport and transport infrastructure” 2014–2020 and with funds from the national budget. The total value of all activities is over BGN 20.6 million.
With this delivery, EA "Exploration and Maintenance of the Danube river" is at the end of the project implementation, due to which it will be able to better perform one of its main tasks, namely - maintenance of the waterway in the Bulgarian section of the river. The project also includes a dredger, a pontoon, a maneuvering vessel and a floating pipeline for transporting sediments. The dredging vessel Yantra, the pipes and the pontoon are already in Ruse. Currently, only the maneuvering vessel, which is being built at the Giurgiu shipyard, is under construction.
