The salt harvesting project in pool 5 in the southern Dead Sea will be one of the biggest engineering projects in Israel in the next few years. According to estimates by Israel Chemicals Ltd. (TASE: ICL), the project will include construction of infrastructure totaling approximately NIS 2.2 billion, and the cost of the project as a whole will be NIS 3.8 billion.
The project will be managed by a special company owned by Dead Sea Works. The company will employ directly about 300 employees, and according to senior managers at Israel Chemicals it will provide work indirectly to some 2,500 people: truck drivers, maintenance personnel, mechanics, engineers, architects, electricians, control personnel, and the list goes on .
Another possibility is that the project will be managed by a unit or an arm of Dead Sea Works. In any event, the unit that manages the program will be in charge of procurement of at least 6 huge barges to carry out the harvesting work. Three barges, with massive excavators, will move in a multi-year program from point to point along pool 5, where Dead Sea Works industrial activity takes place. The dredgers will break up the sea bed where the salt lies.
According to engineering sources, this is difficult work, for the salt accumulated in the pool is as strong as a reinforced concrete floor. At each point, the barges will dredge about a meter of salt. They will pump it out and unload it up next to a huge conveyor belt about 36 kilometers long. It will be constructed between Route 90 and pool 5 and will move about 3,000 tons of salt an hour to the natural basin.
The salt will be unloaded at a special terminal to be constructed between Massada and En Gedi, stacked to dry, and then loaded on three other barges. Their role is opposite to that of the barges that work in the pool 5: they will carry the salt to a deep point in the natural basin where their hulls will open in two and allow the salt to settle into the depths of the basin.
The planning process for the giant project is expected to take two years. It includes permits from committees and bureaucracy (the state promised Israel Chemicals to shorten procedures ). The work of construction of the infrastructure itself - building the conveyor belt, procurement of barges and their assembly, hiring and training workers, and more, - will take two further years .The first cubic meter of salt will be dredged from the bottom of a pool 5 only four years from now. In the meantime , the pool level is rising at a rate of 20 centimeters a year and approaching the nearby hotels in Ein Bokek at an alarming rate . "Now the race against time has begun. We have started late, and the goal is to make up for lost time," says a senior engineering source involved in the project.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on December 29, 2011
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