Lerwick’s Late Dredge Is Built for Heavier Energy Ships

Lerwick Port Authority expects to complete its harbour dredging campaign in October, with Boskalis Westminster still working the final pockets of rock. The job covers five parts of Lerwick Harbour in Shetland and is meant to put larger ships onto more of the port’s berths.

At Dales Voe the port is taking the alongside depth to 14.5 metres and the approaches to 16 metres, water aimed at energy ships on a quay that is already handling whole platforms.

Boskalis Is Cutting the Last Rock This October

The authority said it is pleased the campaign is nearing completion, with contractor Boskalis Westminster Ltd working through the last areas, then the final works and checks. Captain Calum Grains, the port’s chief executive, has framed the cut as a way to let larger ships use the harbour and to spread the gain across several trades.

The dredging across the North Ness Channel, central basin, Gremista, Mair’s Pier and Dales Voe is an important investment in the future of Lerwick Harbour. It will support the continued growth of key sectors, create greater flexibility for vessel movements and increase our ability to accommodate larger vessels.

Captain Calum Grains, Chief Executive, Lerwick Port Authority

The last phase began at Dales Voe on 8 June 2026. Drill barge Rock Mate and backhoe dredger Manu Pekka were sent in for that push, with workboat Jenny D and cargo ship Shetland Trader in support. The authority said both Rock Mate and Manu Pekka had already worked the harbour’s 2008 campaign. Arch Henderson is managing the job. The firm sits inside Haskoning.

Work was planned around the clock through the summer, moving from Dales Voe on to Gremista Basin and North Ness Channel. The port said the stages were set around live shipping and environmental rules, including controlled treatment of underwater rock before the backhoe dug it out.

How Deep Will Dales Voe Be After October?

Once the checks are done, Dales Voe is due to sit at 14.5 metres alongside the quay and 16 metres in the approaches. A stretch of quay finished in 2016 is being taken down to match the older 12.5-metre face first, then the extra depth is added. North Ness Channel is being widened as well as deepened, so ships have more room on the way in to Mair’s Pier, which is being taken to a continuous 10 metres at the quay. Approaches to Gremista Quay are being deepened for the fishing fleet.

WHERE THE NEW WATER SITS

Across the two phases the authority expected to lift 450,000 cubic metres of seabed and rock, with the spoil dumped at a licensed site north of Bressay. Trailer dredger Shoalway took more than 150,000 cubic metres of softer ground in the first phase and left on 21 July 2025, a stage the port said came in on time and on budget. Magnor, billed as the world’s largest backhoe dredger, arrived on 14 August 2025 to start the hard ground.

The Dales Voe slice is only part of that harbour-wide heap. Arch Henderson’s Dales Voe volumes in the licence papers put the original licensed cut there at 76,407 cubic metres, split as 42,044 cubic metres to about 14.5 metres and 34,363 cubic metres in the deeper approach, plus a 29,000 cubic metre over-dredge allowance that may not all be used.

The Finish Date Has Already Slipped

The October target is the third public date for the hard work, not the first. Soft dredging in June and July 2025 did what it was supposed to do. The rock, the blasting window, and a return to site in June 2026 ate the rest of the calendar.

HOW THE PROGRAMME MOVED

1. 16 June 2025: The authority awards Boskalis the first phase at about £3.2 million, names a 450,000 cubic metre haul, and says the hard dredge should be done by the end of 2025.
2. 14 August 2025: Magnor arrives. Grains says the job is scheduled for completion in February 2026, and thanks Bank of Scotland and Highlands and Islands Enterprise for backing a project of this scale.
3. 8 June 2026: Boskalis returns for the final phase at Dales Voe, with a June-to-September window and 24-hour working.
4. August 2026: Rock Mate is still in North Ness Channel while a live platform delivery uses Dales Voe. Completion talk shifts toward early September.
5. October 2026: The authority says the campaign should be fully completed this October, after the last cuts and the surveys that follow.

The awarded capital dredging contract sits at £19.4 million, far above that first-phase £3.2 million, because the hard rock and the extra plant were always the expensive half. Bank of Scotland’s support has been named by the port but not given as a figure.

North Cormorant Used the Quay Mid-Campaign

Dales Voe was not waiting for the dredgers to leave before it earned its keep. In August 2026 Allseas’ Pioneering Spirit, the world’s largest heavy-lift construction ship, took the North Cormorant topsides off in a single lift and brought them to the quay. TAQA UK, the field’s operator, put the weight at more than 17,000 tonnes. At least 97 per cent of the material is due to be recycled. Brown & Mason is breaking the structure with Peterson Energy Logistics, which has a long Shetland presence.

North Cormorant sat in the East Shetland Basin, produced 467 million barrels of oil, and sent that oil through Sullom Voe. First oil was in February 1982. Production stopped in June 2024. The port called the arrival its largest break-up job to date, ahead of the 14,200-tonne Ninian Northern topsides that came in August 2020 on the same heavy-lift ship.

The quay under that steel is already among the strongest in the country, rated at 60 tonnes per square metre, with a knife-edge line load of 800 tonnes per metre so a barge can skid a full topside ashore. Outer harbour water north and south of the port runs deeper than 50 metres, which is why ships of that size can stand off, then come alongside. The new 16-metre approaches are there so the next class of traffic does not have to hope the tide is kind.

The Same Plant Went Back After 2008

Eighteen years sit between this campaign and the last big cut. Westminster Dredging, Boskalis’s UK arm, took the 2008 job at £12 million and, on the contractor’s own sheet, the 2008 works finished that November on programme and on budget. Depths of about 6 metres were taken to 9 metres below chart datum. About 5 hectares of seabed north of Greenhead Base were filled for a future break-up yard, dressed with rock armour.

Manu Pekka dug the weathered rock then, as it is doing now. The 2008 brief already named pelagic fishing and offshore break-up as the trades that would use the deeper water. Sandra Laurenson, then chief executive, said the wider channels and deeper berths would suit larger ships and help those two industries in particular. The argument has not changed. The numbers have. Nine metres was a generation’s answer. Fourteen and a half metres alongside Dales Voe is this one’s.

Paul de Jong, managing director of Boskalis Westminster, said on the 2025 award that it was good to see how far the port had come since 2008 and that the new job mixed trailer dredging, backhoe work, and marine drilling and blasting. That mix is why a summer that was supposed to close the hard phase in 2025 ran into 2026.

HIE’s £1.175 Million Points at a Deeper Quay

Highlands and Islands Enterprise approved up to £1.175 million for Dales Voe dredging on 14 August 2025, the same day Magnor arrived. The money is for prep work and for taking the quayside and approaches to 16 metres. HIE placed that grant inside a wider Scottish Government pot of up to £500 million over five years for ports and the offshore wind supply chain.

Grains said the HIE support had been instrumental in delivering harbour works that would serve the energy industry for decades. Katrina Wiseman, HIE’s Shetland area manager, tied the same cheque to a quay that does not yet exist at the depth the port eventually wants.

Our investment in this project underlines HIE’s commitment to ensuring Shetland and the wider Highlands and Islands remain at the forefront of the renewable energy transition. The development of an ultra-deep-water quay at Dales Voe will significantly strengthen the region’s infrastructure, supporting the next generation of offshore energy and decommissioning activity.

Katrina Wiseman, HIE Shetland Area Manager, 14 August 2025 funding note

The port’s own plan is a 100-metre quay at 21 metres alongside, with an option to go to 24 to 25 metres later. Lerwick would then be the only UK port with alongside depth for the largest crane ships. The estimate on that quay is £34 million. The Scottish Government has pledged £9 million through the Islands Growth Deal. In 2018 a government-commissioned study named Dales Voe as the best UK site for an ultra-deep break-up berth. First Minister John Swinney toured the harbour on 20 August 2025 to look at that expansion.

First Minister @JohnSwinney toured Lerwick Harbour to see progress in the expansion of the Ultra-Deep-Water Quay.

The project will enhance Shetland's capacity for offshore wind – supported by £1.175 million from @HIEScotland as part of wider @ScotGov investment. pic.twitter.com/OXwVUlnyQZ

— First Minister (@ScotGovFM) August 20, 2025

This October campaign does not build that 21-metre face. It takes the existing voe to 16 metres so larger energy ships can use what is already there, and so the next quay, if it is funded and poured, does not start from a shallow hole. Until then, overseas yards still have the water Lerwick is trying to match.

Gremista and Mair’s Pier Take the Everyday Cuts

Fishing voices treated the October notice as fleet news, which is fair for Gremista and wrong for the bill. The pelagic berths get deeper approaches. The metres that cost the money sit a voe away, under platform steel. Cruise traffic is in the middle: Mair’s Pier at 10 metres is a mid-size alongside berth, not a pitch for the largest hulls, which still swing at anchor.

WHAT EACH TRADE GETS FROM THIS CUT

• Fishing: Deeper approaches at Gremista Quay, sold by the port as room for future growth in the pelagic fleet.
• Cruise: A continuous 10 metres at Mair’s Pier, plus a wider North Ness Channel, aimed at mid-size ships rather than the giants that still lie off.
• Energy: 14.5 metres beside Dales Voe and 16 metres in the approaches, on a quay already rated at 60 tonnes per square metre.

Port figures for 2025 show why the energy side is the one in a hurry. Cruise passengers at Lerwick were 129,954, down 6 per cent on a strong year before. For 2026 the port has planned 147 cruise calls, about 130,000 passengers and 6.2 million gross tonnes, with MSC Virtuosa at 181,000 gross tonnes due on 20 July, a ship that will not need a 10-metre quay because it will not sit on one. Oil-related cargo, by contrast, rose 40 per cent in 2025 to 66,927 tonnes, lifted by subsea break-up and other offshore work run from the harbour.

Melanie Henderson, the port’s cruise and marketing manager, has said most cruise ships that visit are small to medium, and that the dredge is part of keeping those calls. That is the North Ness and Mair’s Pier half of the map. The Dales Voe half is a different customer, already on the pad, waiting on water the rest of the harbour does not need.

Boskalis is still in the last ground. The authority says the surveys and the remaining cuts should close the campaign in October. North Cormorant’s steel is already ashore. The 21-metre quay is still a drawing with a £9 million public pledge against a £34 million tag.