Six Construct, a subsidiary of the BESIX Group, and one of the largest Belgian construction companies operating in the Middle East, has announced the completion of the expansion project for the Gabbro terminal in Mesaieed for Qatar Primary Materials company (QPMC).

According to a Six Construct press release, the company, in consortium with Danish engineering group FLSMidth, recently completed the expansion of the Gabbro Terminal, and has resulted in doubling the capacity of the terminal by replacing the current operation system (4,000 daily rotations) with a state-of-the-art conveyor system, which will help boost the terminal’s annual turnover to an impressive 30 million tons of aggregate.

To support the new, streamlined supply chain, Six Construct was responsible for building the auxiliary infrastructure, such as sub-stations and weigh bridges, and installing the electro-mechanical equipment. Within the first few months of the project, Six Construct was also awarded two additional 33KV substations, which feeds the main project under a separate EPC contract.

“The overall concept was to keep the existing offloading cranes, whilst optimising their maximum capacity by removing the trucking operations which was the main bottle neck of the process,” explained Frederic Brunelle, project director of Six Construct.

Each ‘stacker’, weighing 260 tons, travels on a 900m long rail and piles the materials up to 20m high. The total process allows material to be stored from the vessel to the stockpile in approximately 25 minutes and replaces up to 4000 daily truck rotations in the berth, while more than doubling the current output of the existing cranes.