Valme’s Booms for the Genoa New Breakwater

Genoa's New Breakwater is an impressive and one-of-a-kind engineering feat: its foundation is on a 50-meter depth seabed, and reaches an overall length of about 6,000 meters. Seven million tons of rock material are used to build the basement, made with precast concrete elements.

Genoa New Breakwater is the biggest renewal of the port’s infrastructure in Northern Italy in 25 years and Valme takes part in it. Some figures:

• 6.000 m - Total length
• 400 m - Width of the inner channel
• 50 m - Maximum depth

The New Genoa Breakwater's structure will be divided into modules: i.e. the cellular caissons (they are divided into cells, empty cavities then filled with rock material). These concrete giants can reach 33 meters in height. They are laid one next to the other upon the submerged base to give the shape to the breakwater.

The construction of the caissons is one of the most demanding parts of the project because they are made in the sea directly: a metal formwork is set up on a floating platform, and concrete is poured into it. The Valme solution takes action at this stage: a series of placing booms hooked to the platform which lift together with the platform in order to repeat the concrete casting, layer by layer, until the required height is reached. The project is the fruit of Valme's long experience in the manufacture of components for concrete placing; not just spare parts, but real tailor-made projects for special jobsites, such as the new breakwater.

Once the Valme booms work is done, the caisson is ready and then transported to the pre-set site by tugboats, sunk (by filling the cells with seawater) and filled with stones. The caisson is then capped by a top structure on which the breakwater wall stands. The caissons are made by applying sustainability principles:

• an innovative concrete mix to increase the waterproof quality
• recycled inert material from the old breakwater's demolishing to fill the cells