Modem Machinery For Suez Project Will Overshadow De Lesseps’s Achievements

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27229, 4 November 1949, Page 7

Modem Machinery For Suez Project Will Overshadow De Lesseps’s Achievements

Work will commence shortly on the building of a new seven-and-a-half-mile loop for the Suez canal. It will cut across the Sinai Desert and provide two-way traffic in the canal by eliminating i the need for north or south-bound ships to tie up to allow others to pass. The loop is due to be completed in 15 months at an estimated cost of £2,100,000. Modern equipment will make it possible for the present builders to achieve in one day work which took Ferdinand de Le'sseps and his 80,000 men one month to complete. The original project was begun in 1859, and the canal was opened to traffic in 1869.

Five French engineers, 60 Dutch technicians, and 200 Egyptian workers together with a flotilla of ships, tugs, floating docks, dredgers, and powerful modern machinery from Germany, Holland, France, and the United States are assembling at Suez canal headquarters. On the day fixed for the beginning of operations, which will entail the

removal of 48,000,000 tons of soil, five giant 240-ton excavators capable of clearing 24,000 tons of soil daily, eight 1500 horse-power draglines, and. 10 bulldozers and. scrapers will go into action Excavators cutting across the desert' will shift 24,640,000 tons of sand, which will be removed by conveyor belts to the eastern bank. Oil and calciferous rock below will be removed by bucket dredgers and suction dredgers, while sand suckers will deepen the channel below the water. Five French firms secured the contract on international tenders in August of this year for the work. For carrying out this project they combined into one company under the name of the Association aes Travaux Ismailia—Port Said.—NZPA Special Correspondent. London, Nov. 3.