Maputo, Sept. 19, 2025 (Lusa) - The state-owned Mozambican Dredging Company (Emodraga) needs around 4.8 billion meticais (€63.7 million) to renew its fleet, it announced on Friday.
"We need to buy new dredgers and other small vessels. We're talking about dredgers and barges, including tugboats," said the chairman of Emodraga's board of directors, Domingos Bié, during a visit to the company's workshops in the port of Beira, in Sofala province.
According to Bié, the sum includes the need to "scrap" two dredgers and buy one with a larger capacity instead.
"We're talking about 3,000 cubic metres of hold or a little more," said the administrator.
On the occasion, the Secretary of State in Sofala, Manuel Rodrigues, reiterated the need for the company to capitalise on its resources to increase production.
"What we recommend to Emodraga is to make the most of the installed capacity, in terms of dredgers, and reuse those dredgers that are a bit obsolete," he concluded.
In 2023, Emodraga achieved a record of removing around three million cubic metres of sediment from the access channel to the port of Beira, in central Mozambique, according to previous official data.
"We've reached a record. We dredged around three million cubic metres last year. This is a milestone, we've never done this before in Emodraga's history, so last year was quite good in terms of the volume of dredging in the access channel to the port of Beira, where we have the largest volume of business," Domingos Bié, chairman of Emodraga's board of directors, told reporters at the time.
According to him, the 2023 record was due to the amount of sediment that entered the port due to the rains in the region, and the average annual volume of dredging is 2.5 million cubic metres.
"Last year we dredged two million eight hundred thousand, so this year we set a record," said Bié, adding that navigation in the Porto of Beira takes place 24 hours a day, which allows the entry of ships with large draughts, the largest of which, 266 metres long, called at the port in 2023.
Domingos Bié also said that the company intends to dredge rivers and dams, having identified three dams in the provinces of Manica and Tete, in the centre of Mozambique, and Niassa, in the north.
Emodraga has three operational machines with the capacity to dredge five million cubic metres at the port of Beira, one of the busiest in Mozambique.
LYCE/ADB // ADB.
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