UK Kishorn Port Dry Dock Expansion: SER Deploys Over 20 Machines

en.Wedoany.com Reported - Stevens Equipment Rental (SER) has deployed more than 20 key machines for the Kishorn Port dry dock expansion project being built by RJ McLeod. Located on the west coast of Scotland, the project has seen 1 million tonnes of sandstone excavated during construction processed on site and converted into reusable material. The expansion is regarded as one of the UK's most significant dry dock projects.

RJ McLeod's scope includes extending the dry dock and building new yard space. To suit the remote and demanding site, SER configured a complete equipment package: Volvo A45 and A30 articulated haulers, Volvo EC550, EC400 and EC300 excavators, Volvo L180 wheel loaders, Caterpillar 352 excavators, and Caterpillar D7 and D6 dozers. The machines are matched to one another to carry out excavation, hauling, crushing, spreading and compaction in a continuous cycle.

Kishorn's circular dry dock was originally built in the 1970s for North Sea oil platform fabrication. Previously, the dock could accommodate vessels 160 metres long and 13.8 metres below high water. The current scheme increases the dry dock's usable length by 100 metres and reclaims the adjacent tidal area to create 9 hectares of key yard space. The associated infrastructure is aimed at growing business demand in offshore wind, decommissioning and aquaculture.

To reach the design depth and footprint, construction first relocated the existing internal road network before drill-and-blast work on more than 450,000 cubic metres of Torridonian sandstone. The sandstone is dense and considered one of the oldest and most abrasive rock formations in the world, posing a severe test for ground-engaging tools and hauling equipment.

Logistics were as critical as excavation. Rather than relying on road transport for large volumes of material in and out, RJ McLeod processed, crushed and reused all excavated material on site. This aligned with the project's sustainability goals and reduced road haulage, but kept the mobile equipment fleet under sustained high load.

To obtain material for quay wall protection, the site team deliberately used wide-spaced drill-and-blast patterns at the face. This method produces large, intact boulders suitable for rock armour, while also generating material that must be sorted on site before further processing.

Under these conditions, equipment selection went beyond a simple rental decision. With abrasive sandstone and multiple material streams, the fleet needed to operate as a balanced system, aligning digging capacity, truck payload, loading capability and dozer output to avoid bottlenecks.

In operation, heavy excavators sit on blasted rock loading articulated haulers; excavators fitted with breakers handle oversized sandstone for the mobile crusher. Wheel loaders and dozers then handle feeding, spreading and levelling, driving the dry dock and yard areas into shape.

With Kishorn located on the remote west coast, SER's approach to machine uptime went beyond selection. The company stocks key components and oils on site, supports scheduled maintenance, and has an engineer on site for most weeks of the project to meet maintenance needs and resolve issues quickly.

Beyond the scale of the works, Kishorn also reflects a shift in the UK earthmoving sector: large projects are increasingly planned around whole-system output, machine matching and total uptime, rather than the rental cost of a single asset.

Mark Need, Sales Manager for Scotland and Northern England at SER, said that once a project reaches this scale, operational bottlenecks appear immediately; productivity depends on the system, not one machine. If an excavator waits for a hauler, or a dozer cannot keep up with embankment fill, output drops instantly. Contractors are no longer focused only on the weekly rental rate, but on how equipment selection protects overall project progress.

This thinking shaped SER's equipment configuration at Kishorn. Larger Caterpillar D7 dozers were deployed alongside D6 units to increase spreading and levelling output in the yard areas; 45-tonne articulated haulers were used to maximise effective payload per cycle on longer internal hauls. In production-oriented operations, the benefit is seen not only in individual machine performance but in the pace of work across the whole site.

The project also shows that contractors' expectations for equipment specification have changed. Features once seen as optional add-ons are now basic prerequisites for major infrastructure works.

To cope with the extreme abrasiveness of the Torridonian sandstone, SER equipped its heavy excavator fleet with reinforced buckets supplied by Sunderland-based HSM Buckets, supported by custom ground-engaging tools (GET) to protect bucket lip integrity and reduce unplanned downtime at the face.

Mark said SER understands the complexity of modern earthmoving and quarrying operations and builds its fleet around what contractors actually need on day one at site. All of its dozers, compactors and excavators are either already fitted with 3D machine control systems or ready for installation, to further improve on-site productivity. On safety, the company fits 360° cameras and human-form detection systems as standard on almost all of its equipment.

Works on site are progressing to target. RJ McLeod, which marks its 75th anniversary this year, is expected to complete the expanded dry dock infrastructure and return to the same site where the company was first involved fifty years ago.