Rohde Nielsen has completed coastal protection operations involving approximately 780,000 cubic metres of sand at Matalascañas Beach in Huelva, Spain.
The trailing suction hopper dredgers Idun R and Thor R worked alongside the split hopper suction dredger Njord R on the project. The company said the vessels dredged and placed the sand along four kilometres of coast over about three months.
For the Spanish Directorate General for the Sustainability of the Coast and the Sea, the work also involved altering nine existing groynes to bolster sand retention. It is part of the strategy for the protection of the Huelva Coast.
The contract was awarded to Rohde Nielsen’s Spanish branch in June 2025 by the Spanish Secretariat of State for the Environment. The works were financed through the European Union’s recovery, transformation and resilience plan.
The project’s 2018 environmental assessment, published by Spain’s environment ministry, set out an original nourishment volume of 700,000 cubic metres along 3.7 kilometres of beach.
Rohde Nielsen’s completion announcement gave larger figures for both the sand volume and the length of coastline treated.
The original design called for remodelling nine of the 18 existing groynes, selecting every other structure. It specified a height of 1.5 metres above beach level for the first 50 metres of each selected groyne to restore sand-retention capacity.
The assessment estimated that the most affected northern section of the beach was retreating by 0.5 to one metre per year. It also recorded that the existing groyne field had been built in 1978 along the urban frontage, with structures spaced about 200 metres apart.
