New IJmuiden sea lock delayed by over 2 years, to cost over €60 mil. more

The construction of a new sea lock in IJmuiden will take 27 months longer than expected, public works department Rijkswaterstaat announced on Tuesday evening. Builders BAM and VolkerWessels are again pushing millions more into the construction, ANP reports.

BAM reports a cost overrun of around 30 million euros, VolkerWessels 31.5 million euros. It is now expected that the first ships will only be able to use the sea lock in January 2022, instead of next year.

In December the two construction companies, united in the OpenIJ consortium, announced that the construction of the sea lock needed to be adjusted. Then the two companies jointly pushed another 100 million euros into the project. The initial budget was around 500 million euros. 

BAM emphasized that these extra costs to the sea lock will not decrease its profit forecast for this year. VolkerWessels said that the company's gross profit this year will be at the same level as last year, if not slightly higher. 

This will be the largest sea lock in the world. Construction on it started in 2016. The lock will be 500 meters long, 70 meters wide and 18 meters deep, and will make it possible for larger ships to dock at the port of Amsterdam.