Stevens backs Kishorn dry dock expansion: production and plant lessons for engineers
Reviewed by Joe Ashwell
First reported on The Construction Index
30 Second Briefing
Stevens Equipment Rental has deployed more than 20 heavy machines to RJ McLeod’s expansion of Kishorn Port’s circular dry dock, which currently accommodates 160m-long vessels at 13.8m below high tide and is being extended by 100m with nine hectares of reclaimed laydown land. Over 450,000m³ of highly abrasive Torridonian sandstone is being drilled, blasted and processed on site, with a deliberately wide blast pattern producing both rock armour boulders and segregated feed for mobile crushing. A mixed Volvo and Caterpillar fleet – including A45/A30 haulers, EC550 excavators and D7/D6 dozers – is being run as a tightly balanced system, supported by on-site parts, fluids and a resident engineer to maintain continuous production.
Technical Brief
- Torridonian sandstone abrasivity is driving accelerated wear on ground-engaging tools and haulage components.
- Existing internal road networks had to be re-routed before bulk drilling and blasting commenced.
- Wide-spaced blast pattern is deliberately tuned to generate intact rock armour plus crusher feed in one pass.
- On-face heavy excavators load articulated haulers directly from blasted rock, minimising double-handling cycles.
- A hammer-equipped excavator is dedicated to breaking oversize blocks ahead of the mobile crusher.
- Wheel loaders and dozers undertake continuous feed, placement and trimming as dock walls and laydown platforms form.
- On-site parts, fluids and a resident Stevens engineer underpin high plant availability in the remote Highlands location.
Our Take
Stevens Equipment Rental’s role at Kishorn sits alongside its recent trials of hydrogen retrofit systems on Volvo plant, suggesting future dry dock campaigns in the West Highlands could become a test bed for lower‑emission heavy equipment in marine infrastructure work.
In our infrastructure coverage, few UK port or dry dock projects feature reclaimed laydown areas on the scale of the 9 ha at Kishorn, which is likely to be attractive for large modular fabrication or decommissioning contracts beyond the Ninian Central precedent.
Recent pieces on Stevens’ adoption of Cat 972 loaders with collision warning and the UK’s first Cat 980 with automatic emergency braking indicate that RJ McLeod is gaining access to a rental fleet with above‑average safety technology for a remote, high‑risk coastal construction environment.
Prepared by collating external sources, AI-assisted tools, and Geomechanics.io’s proprietary mining database, then reviewed for technical accuracy & edited by our geotechnical team.
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