The huge floating ship repair dock for NamPort has arrived at the port this week, amidst much exitement. Elgin, Brown & Hamer Consortium and NamPort jointly undertook a significant step in increasing Namibia’s capacity in the ship repair industry. This is a deliberate effort by the Namibian government through NamPort to intensify ship repair activities with the aim of job creation and economic development.

Ownership of the floating dock and the ship repair activities will be conducted by Elgin, Brown & Hamer Namibia, a joint venture between NamPort and Elgin.

The floating dock, "LARA 1", can lift vessels up to 150m in length, 25m beam and 8,500 metric tons. The dock’s name will be changed to "NAMDOCK" to better suit its location and to reflect its future role in Namibia. Because of the larger size of vessels to be serviced plus the additional international ship repair contracting expertise, the introduction of the floating dock into Walvis Bay’s ship repair industry will immediately introduce approximately 100 additional upstream jobs and a great number of downstream jobs, NamPort said.

The floating dock "Lara 1" was located in Malta and found to be ideal for the purpose. It was built in 1979 in the Ukraine and has been well maintained. It has a concrete pontoon with steel side walls. The advantage of the concrete pontoon is that it does not need regular dry docking itself because concrete does not deteriorate underwater and unless the concrete integrity is broken it can remain in seawater indefinitely without maintenance. It does not attract sea growth easily and any resilient growth will be removed in position periodically.

News of the increased ship repair capacity in Namibia has resulted in interest from the oil industry and repair contracts to oil rigs in Walvis Bay will be a reality in future.