DAMEN Shipyards has signed an agreement with Civmec Forgacs Defence for Forgacs to build a dredge for an unspecified customer at its Henderson, WA facility.

The agreement to place the construction work for the 60m-long dredge with Forgacs comes after Damen qualified the Australian company as part of its SEA 1180 Offshore Patrol Vessel (OPV) Australian Industrial Capability (AIC) effort.

“What we signed today was for a piece of dredging equipment which, as an international shipyard, is normally built in China,” Damen’s area director Asia Pacific, Roland Briene said at Wednesday’s signing at PACIFIC 2017.

“Instead of getting this equipment from China, we have decided to start building with our partners Forgacs Defence. Civmec Forgacs is very capable of building top of the class engineered steel structures, so by cooperating more with Forgacs for SEA 1180, we found that their levels of quality and efficiency are quite high.”

When completed, the towed dredge will be based in the Northwest Shelf region of WA.

“The dredging equipment comes from Holland,” he said.

“Normally we would build the rest of the dredge such as the pontoons and the barge in China or in the Netherlands, but the quality here is so good that, price-wise it made sense to build it here, and to also support our relationship with Forgacs.”

The dredge work for Forgacs will form part of Damen’s SEA 1180 AIC plan, and Damen hopes to place more work locally with Forgacs and other companies as it becomes more aware of other local capabilities.

“South-East Asia is a big market for dredges and we hope to place more work here with Forgacs because of Australia’s proximity to those markets. Also, the efficiency and quality in Australia is much better than other countries in the region.”