WeBuild to create the new Genoa Breakwater

Genoa - The contract for the design and construction of the new breakwater of the port of Genoa was awarded to the consortium being set up with the parent company Webuild. The award comes at the end of an extremely complex job of planning, designing, approving and entrusting the most important maritime work ever built in Italy aimed at improving nautical accessibility and the safety conditions of the main national port: "At the beginning of 2023 , in full compliance with the deadlines set by the National Recovery and Resilience Plan, after the completion of the design, the works will start and will finish by the end of 2026”.

Thus the president of the Western Ligurian Sea System Authority Paolo Emilio Signorini for the award of the Genoa Dam which was expected today: "Great satisfaction for the assignment of the works - add the president of the Liguria Region Giovanni Toti and the mayor of Genoa Marco Bucci -. We are facing an event that is no exaggeration to define epochal and that will change the face of our port and the competitiveness of the entire Italian logistics. Genoa and Liguria continue on their path of change and modernization. The assignment of the works of the Dam is one of those news that will enter the economic history of this region. Starting today, the construction of a fundamental work not only for Genoa and Liguria but for the whole country ".

Webuild will therefore be the leader of the consortium that will build the new breakwater of the port of Genoa, alongside Fincantieri Infrastructure Opere Marittime, Fincosit and Sidra, for an overall auction value of 928 million euros (910,9 mln euros the offer by the consortium).

The construction group led by Pietro Salini participates in the construction consortium with a 40% share. The new breakwater is a unique work in the world for its engineering complexity, both for its size and for its construction entirely in the open sea, without interrupting port activities. It will rest on depths of up to 50 meters, the greatest depth in the world ever experienced for a breakwater, and will have an overall length of 6.2 kilometers, of which just over four included in the so-called Phase A works (i.e. contracted out today).

With the new breakwater, the largest renovation of the Ligurian port area of ​​the last 25 years is thus carried out, with the expansion of the transit and maneuvering spaces for ships inside the seaport, so as to enhance their reception capacity and transform it into an infrastructure capable of increasing the competitiveness of the Ligurian system and of Italy as a whole.

Its construction will allow safe access to the port for larger container ships, up to 400-450 meters long (double those that can pass today), adapting the specifications of the port of Genoa to the needs of the major shipping companies: “A project of great economic impact for the city, for its commercial port and for the whole of Italy, which generates development already from the construction phase” they say from WeBuild.

For the construction of the new breakwater, more than 1,000 people will be employed, including direct and third parties. Commissioned by the Port System Authority of the Western Ligurian Sea, the work is part of the extraordinary program for the recovery of the port of Genoa, will be co-financed by the government with resources from the complementary Fund to the Pnrr and will benefit from the Decreto Aiuti (Legislative Decree 17 May 2022, no. 50).

The project involves the construction of a very impressive new breakwater about 450 meters beyond the current breakwater. For Phase A, currently financed, a basement will be built at a depth of 50 meters through the use of seven million tons of rock material, on which prefabricated reinforced concrete elements composed of about 100 cellular caissons, up to size 33 meters high, 35 meters wide and 67 meters long, each equivalent in height to a 10-storey building.

The new infrastructure stands out for the innovative technologies used for its construction and for its sustainability, guaranteed by systems aimed at maximizing the circular economy, including the recovery, reuse and transformation of aggregates.

The new breakwater is a project of European, as well as national and local significance. The resulting enhancement of the maritime accessibility of the port of Genoa will in fact consolidate the strategic role of the city's port system within the Rhine-Alps corridor of the trans-European transport network Ten-T, a corridor that goes from Genoa to Rotterdam and of which the single project Terzo Valico dei Giovi-Nodo di Genova is also an integral part, also carried out by Webuild.

The Terzo valico of the Giovi, which will make it possible to fully exploit the potential of the new flows of the Port of Genoa in a logic of integrated transport system, currently records a progressive progress of the excavations of 81% with 73.4 kilometers already completed, out of a total of almost 91 km of tunnels envisaged by the project.