The acquisition of this floating dock follows a call for tenders won in 2023 by the Piriou group, which had one of the rare tools offering the capacities desired by the GPM of La Réunion while meeting the physical constraints of the port West, near the naval base. “Only one dock can accommodate such equipment and it is not in deep water. It was therefore necessary to have a very low base in proportion to its lifting capacity, at least 4,000 tonnes,” Christophe Lagathu, general director of the Piriou Services Center, explains to Mer et Marine. With 10.5 meters of water depth, the exercise was not easy at all.
The solution was therefore found in Nigeria, where the West Atlantic Shipyard (WAS), a Piriou subsidiary dedicated to the maintenance of offshore oil service vessels working in the region, had two floating docks in Port Harcourt. Fairly recent equipment since it was built in 2013 and 2014 by the Polish shipyard Navikon. One of them, corresponding to Reunion’s needs, was put on the second-hand market and finally selected by the port.
This floating dock, 120 meters long and 32 wide, offers a useful width of 26 meters and a lifting capacity of 4,600 tonnes. It is equipped with two cranes capable of handling loads of 5 and 8 tonnes. Initially, this equipment will be towed to South Africa. “It is going to Cape Town to go into dry dock and benefit from a complete overhaul. This project must take place over two months, in July and August, then, at the end, we plan a month of tests.” Then, the dock will set sail again to reach Reunion Island, after a transit of around a month. Its entry into operation is normally scheduled for the end of the year, unless the work necessary to accommodate it at the West Port is not completed. At this stage, the land infrastructure (workshops and electricity in particular) are ready but the two dolphins which will maintain the floating dock are still missing. This will be installed in the Jules Caillet basin, just opposite the station where the Marion Dufresne is parked. The large oceanographic and supply vessel for the southern lands will also be the only boat based in Reunion that the floating dock will not be able to accommodate. All others will be able to benefit from it, in particular fishing and port service boats, as well as vessels of the French Navy, such as the surveillance frigates Floréal and Nivôse, the polar patrol vessel L’Astrolabe, the support and assistance vessel Champlain as well as future patrol officers Auguste Techer and Félix Eboué.
The floating dock (here modeled with L’Astrolabe au sec) will be installed at the Jules Caillet basin, in front of the dock hosting the Marion Dufresne.
With this floating dock, the port of Reunion will finally fill an important gap for the maintenance of the main ships based on the island, where no infrastructure existed to allow them to go into dry dock. Which explains why, for years, the major technical stops of the Reunion fleet have been carried out abroad, in particular in Mauritius. It is precisely for this reason, and in the absence of a local solution at the time, that Guy Piriou created, in 1998, the Indian Ocean Shipyard (CNOI) in Port Louis, which was the first establishment of the Breton group abroad. Twenty-five years later, the Reunion solution finally emerged. It will therefore be simpler but it is also a strategic question, especially after the health crisis which demonstrated that this capacity could be cruelly lacking. “During Covid and the confinements, there was no longer anything to dry dock the ships from Reunion Island. With the floating dock, which meets an important need, France will no longer be dependent on extra-community resources and it will recover its sovereignty, not only for the military vessels based in the Indian Ocean, but also for the port tugs which were to go to Mauritius to go into dry dock,” underlines Christophe Lagathu.
And of course, this will allow the Piriou group, which sold its stake in CNOI in 2011, to develop its activity in ship repair in Reunion. “We set up there in 2018 with two permanent staff at the time. Today, we have around fifty employees on site and this workforce should double in the next two to three years, which means many local staff to recruit and train, as well as partners with whom we will develop the activity. . We are in the process of recreating an entire ship repair sector in Reunion, where the market is important.” Starting with the ships that Piriou built himself, such as longliners fishing in southern waters and certain military units. But the group is not only targeting the island market. “In front of Reunion there is a maritime route through which many ships, boats of all types, pass, so there are opportunities.”
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