Alewijnse said it is working with the Damen Shipyards Group once again, this time in Romania's Damen Shipyard Mangalia.

The first steel was cut in May 2019 for the vessel and now Alewijnse is getting ready to start work on board. A team of more than 200 qualified technicians will work on the project until December 2020, and the vessel is scheduled to begin work off Namibia's coast in 2022.

The AMV3 is a complex vessel, and the design includes partners from both the mining and maritime industries. The work involves a wide range of sophisticated electrical power, control and monitoring systems. The ultimate subsea crawling technology that recovers diamonds from the seabed is paramount among these.

This includes a 300-ton crawler system that deploys a mechanical arm that travels in a horizontal arc, dredging material from the sea floor at depths of around 130 meters directly below the hull. A broad onboard processing plant then sifts on board the ship the dredged stone, extracting the diamonds and sealing them in metal canisters.

Maritime Business World