Réunion road rolls ahead

21 June 2016


A €1.7bn project to link St Denis, the capital of the French Indian Ocean department of Réunion, with the island’s port near La Possession, is getting well underway.

The project to improve the link between St Denis and La Possession was announced in December 2013.

It will see a new 5.4km six-lane highway built on a viaduct built in the sea between St Denis and the village of La Grande Chaloupe, replacing a coastal road that was subject to rock falls and flooding.

The viaduct will be built by a consortium of Vinci Construction Grands Projets, Dodin Campenon Bernard, Bouygues Travaux Publics and Demathieu & Bard.

The road will continue on from La Grande Chaloupe to La Possession on land. This will be built by GTOI, a Réunion-based subsidiary of Colas, SBTPC and Vinci Construction Terrassement.

The viaduct will be built using a 4,800t gantry crane, fabricated by Enerpac in Hengelo, the Netherlands. Work on the crane began at the start of 2015. Later that year, the crane was shipped to Poland, where it underwent testing and was mounted on the jack up barge Zourite. Barge and crane have now been mounted on a semi-submersible heavy lift vessel and are on their way to Réunion. They are expected to arrive in June.

Work on the road is already well underway, and 16 cranes from Manitowoc are working on the project. These comprise two Potain MD 485B M20s, two MDT 368, one MD 560 B, a K5-50C, a Manitowoc 12000E-1 crawler crane, seven Grove all-terrain cranes and two Grove rough-terrain cranes. The installation of the Potain cranes was completed in September 2015, including setting up and erecting the jibs. The cranes were supplied by contractors Vinci and Bouygues, and Grues Levages Investissements, Manitowoc’s dealer for Réunion, Mayotte, and Mauritius.

The top section of Offshore Heavy Transport’s Hawk pokes up from the sea, with Enerpac’s 4,800t crane on the Zourite barge mounted on the semi-submersible’s submerged deck.CREDIT: Piotr Januszewski
Manitowoc crawlers working on the project
Potain tower cranes at work on prefabricated concrete structures for the viaduct
Potain tower cranes at work on prefabricated concrete structures for the viaduct