Dutch marine engineering company ECTMarine has handed over a new purpose-built workboat to Arab Potash Company (APC) in Jordan following successful site acceptance testing (SAT).
The SAT of the new workboat was completed last week on APC's brine evaporation ponds in the Dead Sea. The vessel was designed and built in the Netherlands.
ECTMarine said the workboat was tailored to the conditions of the Dead Sea, where the dense, highly saline brine and the site’s location around 400 metres below sea level posed specific challenges.
The vessel features a forward wheelhouse, an open working deck, and a knuckle boom deck crane. ECTMarine designed the vessel around APC’s operational requirements, with a hull and deck layout suitable for road transport on a standard flat rack.
The workboat was shipped to Jordan on a flat rack and trucked along the dykes of APC's evaporation ponds to the launch point. There, a mobile crane with a double spreader-bar rig lifted it from the trailer into the brine. The SAT was conducted shortly afterwards.