General – Dredging
Eastern Shipbuilding Group has been contracted by the US Army Corps of Engineers to design and construct a new medium-class hopper dredge (MCHD) for the Department of Defense and formally received the notice to proceed.
The dredge will be constructed at Eastern’s Allanton and Port St. Joe facilities and is scheduled for delivery in 2027.
Eastern is the only U.S. shipyard to have delivered comparable dredges in the past 15 years. The Group has a successful track record building large and complex hopper dredges for commercial customers.
Eastern has again teamed with Royal IHC. The ‘Dutch’ has designed a tailor-made state-of-the-art diesel-electric hopper dredge to precisely meet USACE requirements. The design is the result of knowledge built over years of designing and building similar TSHDs. The hull form, based on Royal IHC’s proven Beagle TSHD-series, provides the best balance of proven carrying capacity, dredging performance, seakeeping, and open water transit operations as well as highly predictable operating characteristics.
