Namdeb eagerly awaits delivery of its new marine diamond mining ship

Eileen van der Schyff

The largest diamond recovery vessel on the planet, now still only referred to as AMV3, is expected to arrive in Cape Town by next week, where the vessel will undergo final preparations before being commissioned by Debmarine in Namibia’s offshore diamond mining industry early in 2022.

ANV3 was constructed in Romania at the shipyard of Damen Shipyards. After it was handed over to its new owner Debmarine in Romania, it set sail on 19 August this year for its southbound voyage to Cape Town.
At a length of 177m and fitted with ultra-modern offshore diamond mining equipment, Debmarine prides itself as the owner now of this ship, officially the biggest of its kind on the planet. The ship’s new name has not been announced yet, and several of the components that the ship will be fitted with were fabricated in Walvis Bay.
“It marks a significant milestone on the Debmarine Namibia calendar, and for our country Namibia, as we witness the completion of the vessel”.
“It represents the largest ever single investment in the history of marine diamond recovery. We keenly await the arrival of this asset to join the rest of the fleet to recover marine diamonds safely and sustainably, while building a lasting positive legacy for Namibia”, Willy Mertens, the Chief Financial Officer of Debmarine Namibia”, said in Romania last month during the official handover of the ship to Debmarine during a quayside ceremony at the dock-yard.

The AMV3 that will use sub-sea crawling extraction techniques to retrieve diamonds from the seabed. The diamond bearing gravel will be processed on board. The vessel’s expected operational life-time is thirty years.