Webuild has a 40% stake in the consortium, which also includes Italian partners Fincantieri Infrastructure Opere Marittime, Fincosit and Sidra.
The €928m (£810m) project, called Nuova Diga Foranea, will involve building the breakwater offshore to allow the port to operate uninterrupted. The client is the Western Ligurian Sea Port Authority and the project is being co-funded by the Italian government through its National Plan for Recovery and Resilience.
Webuild says that the scheme is unique in its scale and complexity. The 6.2 kilometre-long structure will sit on foundations in water up to 50 metres deep, making it one of the deepest in the world.
Hailed as the most ambitious upgrade of the Port of Genoa for 25 years, the project will enable the port to accept the largest container ships and will improve the competitiveness of the Ligurian and Italian port system.
The new breakwater will guarantee direct access to the port’s terminal facilities, as well as providing a wide turning basin for container ships. At up to 450 metres in length, these ships are twice the size of those that the port can currently receive.
Webuild says that the project’s impact on the port, the city of Genoa and the surrounding region will be felt from the outset with the creation of more than 1,000 direct and indirect jobs.
The project entails the construction of a breakwater approximately 450 metres beyond the current barrier. The first phase involves placing an estimated seven million tonnes of rock mass in up to 50 metres of water to create the foundations for the breakwater.
Approximately 100 prefabricated reinforced concrete caissons will then be placed upon the foundations. Measuring up to 33 metres high, 35 metres wide and 67 metres long, each caisson will be the size of a 10-storey building.
By improving maritime access to the port, the project is expected to strengthen Genoa’s strategic role within the Rhine-Alpine Corridor of the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T), a planned network of roads, railways, airports and shipping infrastructure in the European Union.
Webuild is also main contractor for the Terzo Valico dei Giovi-Genoa Junction high-speed rail project, another part of the Rhine-Alpine Corridor.
The Terzo Valico project has seen excavation work reach 81% completion, and over 73 kilometres of tunnels out of a total of nearly 91 kilometres have already been built.
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