Dremar project company, a joint venture formed by Drewes Logistics and Martrade Shipping, has secured a contract from RWE Power for the transport logistics of a total of 9,120 coated steel pipes with a total length of 106 kilometres.

The two logistics service providers won the tender for RWE’s “Rhine water transport pipeline” project. The project will take water from the Rhine near Dormagen to flood and renaturalise the Hambach and Garzweiler open-cast mines in the Rhineland mining area from 2030 onwards. The most important part of the “Rhine water transport Pipeline” project is the construction of the approximately 45-kilometre-long double and triple-tube pipeline.

RWE has launched an extensive tender for the associated logistics services, which has now been won by the project company Dremar. the ports of departure for the shipment of the pipes are Arzew in Algeria and Iskenderun in Turkey.

“The sea transport from the ports will take around seven and 13 days respectively. The port of destination is Brake on the Lower Weser,” says Thomas Hölker, managing director of Drewes Logistics. DREMAR is taking 46 box open-hatch vessels on full charter for the shipment.

From Brake, the pipes are transported by rail on ten trains a month to RWE’s central warehouse in Grevenbroich-Neurath in the Rhineland coalfield.

The contract covers the overall logistics organisation for the project. This ranges from the provision and loading of the sea-going vessels, the subsequent sea transport and unloading to storage at the port of import in Brake and onward transport to the central warehouse with all associated services, according to the two companies.

The total of 9,120 pipes have lengths of eight and twelve metres and a diameter of 2.235 metres. “The contract stipulates that we will ship 400 pipes a month by sea from September as part of the first batch,” adds Günther Hahn, managing director of the Martrade Group.

“In our tender, we placed the highest priority on punctual and safe delivery of the pipes, combined with comprehensive digital documentation throughout the entire process,” emphasises Lars Kulik, Member of the Executive Board of RWE Power AG.

“We were ultimately able to convince RWE with a sophisticated logistics concept and our references from similar major projects. For example, we increased the departure frequency of the ocean-going vessels from the export harbour to two per month compared to the tender in order to prevent possible delays or cancellations,” explain Hölker and Hahn.