As part of a large beach nourishment project off the Dutch coast, the beach of Katwijk was reclaimed. Filia Dredging made a major contribution to this project with the TSHD Willem Sr.

Katwijk’s beach had become considerably narrower due to natural erosion; The beach was restored with the sand replenishment.

The sand for the replenishment was dredged 15 kilometers from the coast by the TSHD Willem Sr. At the beach the Willem Sr connected to a floating pipeline. The sand was then pumped through the floating pipeline and the sinker pipeline to the beach.

The length of the pipeline from the connection point to the beach has been kept as short as possible. This made it possible to reclaim a larger part of the beach without relocating the sinker pipeline and without using a booster. The result of this was that coupling had to be done closer to the beach in shallower water. This was possible due to the shallow draugt of the TSHD Willem Sr. This made it possible to connect discharge 500 meters from the beach.

As the replenishment progressed, a booster was used to increase the pumping distance. The total pipe length was ultimately more than 2 kilometers.

The pipeline was shared with a trailing suction hopper dredger from Van Der Lee Dredging. Later, the contractor laid a second sinker pipeline to the beach and a third trailing suction hopper dredger was deployed.

Together with the two trailing suction hopper dredgers from Van der Lee Dredging, a total of 720,000 cubic meters of sand replenished the beach of Katwijk. The supplementation was completed in March 2023.