- Chairman of Hyundai Motor Chung Mong-koo visited the Dangjin factory to give encouragement.
- A super-sized 9,500 ton-grade caisson will be manufactured using advanced engineering technologies.

Hyundai Motor Group’s construction firm, Amco constructs Korea’s largest pier at Hyundai INI’s Dangjin factory to save logistics costs for raw materials import and boost cost competitiveness.

Amco (Representative Director: Kim Chang-hee. www.amco.co.kr) said on June 6 that the company embarked on the prier construction project by starting to manufacture and install Korea’s biggest “caisson”, a pier berth facility, at Hyundai INI’s Dangjin factory, which will be used for materials and products loading and unloading.

The Dangjin pier is 1,240 meter long in total, allowing four ships of 30,000/70,000/250,000-ton grade to berth at the same time. The new port will be constructed by 2008.

To this end, Amco will manufacture 73 caissons in total on a floating barge capable of submerging, including a 28 meter-high, 20 meter-large, 32 meter-long 9.500 ton grade caisson.

The 9.500 ton grade caisson, biggest among them, is as heavy as 9,500 units of Sonatas, and the largest in Korea by being twice the size of the 5,000 ton grade caisson manufactured at New Port in Busan.

Among the 73 caissons, 18 will be built by an advanced engineering technique of creating a caisson on a barge floating on the sea, and pulling a completed one with a tug to attach it to a pier.

In particular, although 5,000 ton-grade caissons have been created on the sea in Korea, it’s first time to build a 9.500-ton super-sized caisson onboard, a task which requires much advanced technologies.

For the manufacturing, Amco started to pull a caisson (2,700 ton-grade) to be used for constructing a pier to which a 200,000 ton-grade ship could berth by using a 3,000 ton-grade marine crane from June 1.

When completed, the Dangjin pier will be used to provide raw materials to Hyundai INI’s hot rolling factory and Hyundai Hysco’s cold-rolling factory prior to their full operation.

Furthermore, the Dangjin pier of Hyundai INI will become a pier with the greatest berth capability in Korea. Through the project, Amco could have the experience of implementing the biggest pier development project and relevant technological prowess, thereby competing in abreast with renowned construction companies in Korea.

Meanwhile, upon his visit to Dangjin pier to which caissons will be pulled, Chairman of Hyundai Motor Chung Mong-koo offered encouragements to those involved in the project, demonstrating his attention to the pier development.

* Caisson: A concrete box structured with iron rods that is used for building walls during a pier construction project. It helps ships berth easily.