WORK has started on a multi-million pound construction project to rebuild the Eastern jetty. Falmouth-based Fugro GeoServices (FGS) won the contract to build the new oil terminal wharf. FGS nearshore director Les Lugg said: “The Falmouth Jetty contract is one of several significant projects that secure our position as a leading international marine foundation and installation specialist.”

The company is also celebrating the award of two major offshore wind projects, the Rampion windfarm in the English Channel and the Race Bank windfarm in the North Sea. FGS has completed a major contract in Chile which involved drilling three of the world’s largest rock sockets, in some of the hardest rocks on the Pacific seabed.

When completed later this summer, the Eastern Jetty will be the final piece of the jigsaw giving Falmouth Petroleum Limited (FPL) one of the most state-of-the-art, environmentally-compliant bunkering terminals in the UK.

In 2010 FPL embarked upon the rebuild of its terminal to service World Fuel Services bunkering activities, to provide petroleum product storage for local inland oil distribution companies and provide ships’ waste oil reception and recycling facilities for the neighbouring dockyard A&P.

The Eastern Jetty project involves the fabrication and installation of 33 piles, with pile cap bracing structures and the installation of 12 bridge sections and concrete deck. The Dutch cargo vessel Aristote arrived from Rotterdam last week to unload the 33 steel piles needed for the work.

The wharf will be 250 metres long with another 50 metres of link bridges over two mooring dolphins to the existing north dolphin on the end of the current wharf. Much of the old wooden jetty is in a poor state of repair, ravaged by marine borers over the passage of time.

A line of steel piles will be driven into the seabed a few metres outside of the old jetty to form the main structure of the new wharf.

The arrival of Fugro’s jack-up barge Deep Diver in port, along with the steel piles, signalled the start of site works, although much work has been ongoing in local fabrication facilities over the last five months to prepare the jetty for construction.

Designers in Fugro’s Falmouth office faced an array of challenges in order to ensure that the new structure can be built whilst maintaining operations on the existing jetty. “The team at FGS has gained a vast amount of experience in marine engineering projects around the world, however, and is well-placed to deal with this type of complex interaction,” said Les Lugg.

The foundation stone of Falmouth Docks was laid in February 1860 by the then Lord Falmouth. Work commenced in 1860 on excavating two dry docks and the construction of the Prince of Wales (Eastern) and Western wharves. Vessels arrived from the Baltic carrying timber to be used in the construction of the new wharves.

The Prince of Wales Wharf, was completed in 1861. During World War I the Eastern became dilapidated. In 1923 it was not only extensively repaired but lengthened by 100 metres. After World War II and the dawn of the super tanker era the wharf was a hive of activity as tankers were tank cleaned on the berth prior to dry-docking. Eventually this became one of the best tank cleaning operations in the UK.

For both Falmouth Petroleum Ltd and Fugro this project is a key driver in their continued ambition to generate work and local employment in the area. The project is also being supported by the Local Enterprise Partnership Regional Growth Fund.

Apart from some special rolled steel tubes all of the fabrication work, including the concrete deck, will be manufactured or supplied by companies based in the South West.

The tank farm has a capacity of 50,000 tonnes. FPL currently has a terminal throughput in the region of 750,000 tonnes of fuel oil annually to vessels in Falmouth Bay or the Harbour. It is also a sea-fed terminal, strategically placed to supply Cornwall’s fuel distributors, relieving Cornish roads of 2,500 truck movements from Devon each year.