Port 2000 terminal

Considered one of the most important investments ever made in a French port, the purpose of Port 2000 was to double Le Havre’s container traffic (which had risen to 1.5 million units in 2000) by 2006. In this national-scale project, VINCI Construction Grands Projet was approached to build a 6-km breakwater with two 55 m x 28 m x 20 m concrete caisson roundheads in a 13-m draught and a 4-km breakwater surrounding the reclamation area.

background

Port 2000 is the largest European maritime project since 1970 and it enabled Le Havre to receive giant containers. This project made the seaport at Le Havre a major European logistics hub.
This project involved the construction of a port dedicated to containers located to the south of the Le Havre port infrastructure in the Seine estuary. This project also included setting up storage areas and infrastructure necessary for handling maritime traffic.
The objective was to increase Le Havre’s capacity to receive containers. More specifically, the goal was to get rid of all tidal constraints and thereby eliminate the waiting time for the largest latest-generation container ships. It meant boosting capacity to receive 6 million TEU containers and putting Le Havre among the top five European ports.

technical overview

The breakwaters are made of bedrock (80 to 100-m wide) in ordinary gravel from the dredging of the access channel and a core in run-of-mine sand lime protected by rockfill of the same kind and then with hard rocks or cubic blocks. The exterior breakwater is made with Accropode blocks (50,000), which cover the protective breakwater rockfill to stand against rough waves. As for the berths reclaimed from the sea, they consist of surface embankments filled with dredged materials.
The caisson roundheads (56 x 28 x 20 m) at the ends of the exterior breakwaters mark the channel entry. These caissons were precast in dry dock no. 7. Made of concrete, they were put in place with a vertical precision of 5 cm by a self-propelled breakwater pontoon, the “Rambiz.” The installation of the caisson roundheads required no less than two years of engineering for a 72-hour operation.
To respond to a will for sustainable development, this project recycled materials from old breakwaters. First, dredged materials were recovered to the fullest through rigorous zoning and phasing by storing them provisionally and taking them out according to needs. Sand-lime materials, for their part, were extracted from a former quarry specially reopened in the heart of the Brotonne regional park in a bid to rehabilitate the site. Finally, the hard rockfill and sand-lime materials were sent by coastal ships from Cherbourg and by barges from the quarries to achieve significant economies of scale and eliminate the nuisances related to major traffic.

Given the volume of dredging, the deadlines and also the susceptibility of the site to storms, large waves and high currents, this project certainly qualifies as an exceptional achievement.

IMPACT

Declared a “national project of major public interest” by the French president in 1995, Port 2000 was part of the overall policy of regional development. Initially intended to counter competition from northern European ports, Port 2000 is also an example of sustainable development because important environmental measures accompanied the project – the creation of an environmental channel, a repository island on the Seine and a repository dune.
Port 2000 is located in a region of the Seine estuary that was classified as a national natural reserve in 1997. The site is protected by the ZPS special protection zone and by Natura 2000. This is why, during the project, we were particularly careful about situating the structure in its environment. So, here, we can see that nature has taken its rightful place as is the case on the repository island, which is visited by more than a thousand birds, but off limits to human beings.

Project participants

Client
Independent port of Le Havre, Contract Services and Documentary Logistics

Project management
Independent port of Le Havre, Technical Department

Key figures

Implementation dates
August 2001 to July 2005

Concrete
132,500 m3

Earthworks
1,352 million m3

Dredging
67 million m3

Testimonial

“Port 2000 also includes many environmental structures such as a repository island and an environmental channel whose apparent simplicity belie the complexity of their modelling and design.”

Pascal Galichon, administrateur de Port 2000