Hampshire: Walcon Marine and PSP join forces to bring East Africa an on-water first

Two Hampshire companies are set to make history as they work together to bring the East Coast of Africa its first-ever fully-serviced marina.

Walcon Marine in Fareham has won the coveted contract to design and build the floating marina at English Point Resort in Mombasa, Kenya, and fellow Fareham-based logistics company, PSP, is helping to make the plans a reality by transporting hundreds of tonnes of materials to the site.

English Point Marina is a contemporary development featuring apartments, a hotel, restaurant, spa and gym, serviced marina, watersports centre, boardwalk and retail outlets. It is based on a four-acre beachfront site, across the creek from the historic Fort Jesus and the skyline of Mombasa Old Town.

Walcon Marine, whose previous projects include Palm Beach Marina Florida, Sydney Boat Show and of course the PSP Southampton International Boat Show has been tasked with constructing the floating pontoon element of the development, which will provide berths for 88 luxury yachts and motorboats.

The project has kicked into action with Walcon loading pontoon decks, concrete floats, access bridges and other associated equipment into containers and onto flat racks at their yard in Woolston.

The items were then transported to ABP Port of Southampton, where they were loaded onto a container vessel bound for Mombasa Sea Port. Over the coming months PSP will deliver more equipment to East Africa to ensure Walcon Marine’s team of fitters have all they need to get the job done.

Frank Dixie, PSP managing director, said: “This is no ordinary logistics project, not least due to the historic nature of what we are transporting. Because many of the materials are too wide to fit into normal shipping containers they have to be loaded onto ‘flat racks’ – containers with no sides or roof. This enables us to load them despite the fact they are too big for an ordinary container but it also presents new challenges. Anything loaded onto a flat rack has to be secured in a particular way so we made sure we used our specialist team, who are trained and certified in ‘loop lashing’ to do the work.”

The first of PSP’s shipments was due to reach Mombasa by early December, ready for Walcon’s team to start constructing the marina which is due to be completed in Spring 2015.

Clive Kemp, commercial director at Walcon Marine, said: “It is a huge honour to count this historic development among our ever-growing list of international projects. Having worked closely with PSP on many shipments over the years, we count their team as our right hand for logistics and know that together we will do a great job in bringing Mombasa its first ever fully-serviced marina.