Jan De Nul looks at the Guayaquil canal as a business

Ecuadornews:

Jan De Nul (DJN) is called in Luxembourg and that is how the world is known. In Ecuador it took root as Flanders Dredging Corporation (FDC).

The company, one of the largest in the world in dredging and marine construction, and with an annual turnover of 2,000 million dollars, is interested in the long-term business that represents the dredging, deepening, maintenance and administration of the access channel to the maritime and fluvial terminals of Guayaquil.

DJN is one of the four companies that submitted a proposal to the international tender under the public-private partnership of the Municipality of Guayaquil, which seeks to deepen the sea avenue that connects the maritime terminals of this city to 11.8 meters at low tide. The other interested companies are Royal Boskalis, Van Oord and the Channel Towards the Future Consortium, made up of the Belgian Dredging Environmental Marine Engineering (Deme), China Road and Bridge Corporation (CRBC) and the Transoceanic shipping agency.

Jan Van den Driessche, manager for the Jan De Nul region, spoke with EXPRESO and left a clear message: It is a process that interests them and whose management system is not new to them in Latin America.

“There is expectation. It’s a very interesting product for us, because it puts us 25 years in a central point of the Pacific Coast of Latin America. ” Although, Jan De Nul, if you have any experience is in the Ecuadorian Pacific. He finished the first phase of dredging in Puerto Bolívar, works in Manta and has started the second stage of the own access channel built by DP World Posorja.

For him, the dredging of the access channel has some interesting points. One of them, the proposal of the SAAM of Chile (TPG in Guayaquil) to participate in the development of the business.

“I thought it was a very good sign; an excellent signal, because it reinforces more his business model”. With this they manifest their “credibility in the project, and that improves the bancability, because the guarantee of the traffic is important”.

Traffic is a key point

The big question, the uncertainty of the traffic to the maritime terminals and the data that arise from some studies. DJN in Argentina has a concession for the waterway, “where we have 100% risk on the volume to be dredged and 100% of the traffic too; we dredge, there, over 1,400 kilometers about 30 million cubic meters a year.” “It has been a challenge. We have fully complied with the contractual commitment, we believe that with this close experience we can adequately handle this uncertainty in Guayaquil. “

The team is close

We are not going to have bigger surprises. On the one hand, the team is in Posorja, in the area. “If they award us technically in October two weeks later, we could be dredging.” The mobilization costs are low for us, the equipment is here: they are the same suction dredges on the way and we would have to bring the cutter that is in Panama. “He refrained from talking about his financial offer.

Experience in Ecuador

“In Manta it was the first work we did as a group; then that of Puerto Bolívar, phase 1 and we wait for phase 2”, says Jan Van den Driessche. And they are in Posorja. “Yes we did phase 1 and now we are in phase 2,” he says. A ‘now how’ that could give them an advantage when submitting the offer. In fact, they feel “comfortable working here.” The port agent of Jan De Nul in Ecuador is the agency Marglobal, which has the representation of important shipping lines and companies such as Agunsa.

A business model of its own

We have our own internal traffic model, says Jan Van den Driessche, in relation to the information that DP World Posorja circulated among the dredging companies.

“Obviously our model includes the Posorja factor, what will happen; that is one of the great factors of competition of this process, on the part of income of the concession; our analyzes are prepared consistently. ” What happened to the joint proposal they would present with Boskalis. “They were informal offers that did not succeed. That was much earlier (from the deadline to submit bids); The dredging process has generated many novel, positive and iconic things for Ecuador. ” (I)

Source:https://www.expreso.ec/economia/economia-jandenul-guayaquil-dragado-rio-YA2323166