Built for the Dead Sea: Purpose-Built Workboat for Extreme Ops

ECTMarine delivered a purpose-built workboat to Arab Potash Company (APC) in Jordan following successful site acceptance testing (SAT). The SAT of the Custom Workboat 104 was completed last week on APC's brine evaporation ponds at the Dead Sea. APC was represented on site by its main contractor, Alghanem.

Designed and built in the Netherlands, the workboat was tailored to the conditions at the Dead Sea, where the dense, highly saline brine and the site’s location around 400 metres below sea level posed specific challenges.

The Custom Workboat 104 features a forward wheelhouse, an open working deck and a knuckle-boom deck crane. ECTMarine designed the vessel around APC’s operational requirements, with a hull and deck layout suitable for road transport on a standard flat rack.

“The Dead Sea is not a normal place to operate a boat. The brine is extremely dense and corrosive, the site is remote, and the vessel has to be moved by road and lifted in by crane. We needed a workboat built around those conditions and around the tasks APC performs on the ponds. ECTMarine took the time to understand that before they started designing,” said Abdallah Ghammaz, Project Manager at Alghanem.

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