Boskalis and Van Oord: The Dutch Dredgers That Build Coastlines and Offshore Wind

Boskalis and Van Oord are the clearest example of a Dutch industry that turned a domestic necessity, keeping the sea out, into a global export, and that is now betting its next decade on offshore wind rather than on oil and gas. Boskalis, founded in 1910 in Sliedrecht and headquartered in Papendrecht, employs more than 11,000 people and operates about 400 vessels and floating units; in 2025 it earned a net profit of €775 million on revenue of €4.46 billion, and about 55 per cent of its €2.1 billion Offshore Energy division was tied to offshore wind. Van Oord, founded in 1868 and based in Rotterdam, is smaller, privately held and family-owned, with revenue of around €2.9 billion in its last widely reported year and a fleet that includes some of the largest wind-turbine installation vessels afloat. Neither company is listed any more: HAL took Boskalis off Euronext Amsterdam in 2022, and Van Oord never floated. This article explains how the two companies work, how they compete and cooperate, and what their results say about the global infrastructure cycle. It is part of the Netherlands Company Stories hub.

Why do the Dutch dominate dredging?

The Netherlands dominates dredging because a country with a quarter of its land below sea level has had to move sand, build dikes and deepen rivers for centuries, and the firms that did that work at home, Boskalis, Van Oord and their predecessors, turned the equipment and expertise into an export industry in the twentieth century. Together with the Belgian groups DEME and Jan De Nul, the two Dutch companies form what the industry calls the big four, which between them hold the large majority of the global market for capital dredging, land reclamation and marine infrastructure outside China.

The barriers to entry are the ships. A large trailing suction hopper dredger, which sucks sand from the seabed into its own hold and sails it to the reclamation site, costs several hundred million euros and takes years to build; a cutter suction dredger that can cut rock and a heavy-lift vessel that can install a 2,000-tonne wind-turbine monopile are rarer still. Boskalis is building the Seaway, a 31,000-cubic-metre hopper, at IHC in Krimpen aan den IJssel, and converting the Windpiper into a 45,500-tonne subsea rock-installation vessel due to enter service in 2026; Van Oord’s fleet includes the Vox Alexia hopper and the Boreas, a new offshore wind installation vessel designed for the next generation of large turbines. These assets have 25-year lives and are deployed worldwide, which means the companies’ utilisation, measured in weeks per year per vessel, drives their profit. In 2025 Boskalis’ hoppers averaged 32 weeks of work, its rock-installation vessels 49 weeks and its cutters 21 weeks.

The other barrier is the project track record. Van Oord built the Palm Jumeirah in Dubai, completed in 2003, and The World islands, completed in 2008; Boskalis and Van Oord together built Maasvlakte 2, the 2,000-hectare extension of the Port of Rotterdam completed in 2013; Boskalis completed the land for the New Manila International Airport in 2024 and the expansion of Saudi Arabia’s Oxagon port and Singapore’s Pulau Tekong polder in 2025. A client building a port, an island or an airport on reclaimed land has a short list of contractors who have done it before.

The home market remains important. Boskalis’ Dutch work in 2025 included the Meanderende Maas river project, the Zuidasdok in Amsterdam, the A2 motorway, the Markermeerdijken and IJsselmeer dike reinforcements and coastline maintenance in Zeeland and on Ameland, all funded by the national water programme described in the Delta Works and Room for the River story. That steady domestic base is the cushion that allows the companies to take project risk abroad.

How did HAL take Boskalis private, and why?

HAL Holding took Boskalis private in 2022 because it believed public markets were undervaluing a cyclical contractor with a strong balance sheet, and because it already held a large stake and had the capital to buy the rest. HAL, whose origins lie in the Holland America Line and which is controlled by the Van der Vorm family with about 68 per cent of the listed HAL Trust, had been Boskalis’ largest shareholder for years. On 10 March 2022 it offered €32.50 per share for the shares it did not own, about €4.2 billion in total, raised the offer to €33 after the Boskalis board initially declined to recommend it, reached 98.3 per cent by September 2022 and completed a squeeze-out and delisting later that year.

The offer was contested. Boskalis’ board, led by chief executive Peter Berdowski, argued that the price did not reflect the company’s prospects, and several institutional investors agreed; HAL countered that it was a long-term owner that would support investment through the cycle. In hindsight the timing favoured HAL: Boskalis’ net profit rose from €601 million in 2023 to €781 million in 2024 and €775 million in 2025, so the company HAL bought for €4.2 billion has earned more than €2.1 billion in three years and paid dividends to its owner that are not disclosed.

Ownership changed the governance. Berdowski, chief executive since 2006 and the architect of the acquisitions of Smit in 2010 for €1.35 billion, Dockwise in 2013 and Fairmount, stepped down on 1 April 2025 and became chairman of the supervisory board; Theo Baartmans, a board member since 2007, became chief executive, with Bas Heijermans as chief operating officer and Carlo van Noort as chief financial officer. In October 2024 Boskalis bought the remaining shares in Smit Lamnalco, the harbour towage joint venture, and consolidated it fully, which is why Towage & Salvage revenue doubled to €0.4 billion in 2025.

HAL’s portfolio puts Boskalis alongside its 51.4 per cent stake in Vopak, the tank-storage company, 56 per cent of the retailer Coolblue and just under 50 per cent of the Italian eyewear group Safilo. The family office reported equity of €14.8 billion at the end of 2024; Boskalis is its largest single holding and, by the 2025 results, its most profitable.

What did Boskalis earn in 2025?

Boskalis’ 2025 results, published on 5 March 2026, showed revenue of €4.46 billion, up from €4.36 billion, EBITDA of €1.34 billion, an operating result of €886 million, up 13.3 per cent, and a net profit of €775 million, marginally below the €781 million of 2024, which had included a €143 million exceptional gain. The order book ended the year at €7.0 billion, flat on 2024, the net financial position was €1.1 billion of cash and solvency 57 per cent. Baartmans attributed the record to employees’ performance amid geopolitical uncertainty and said the result was exceptional and would not be repeated in 2026.

The division detail shows where the business has shifted. Dredging & Inland Infra, the historic core, had revenue of €1.9 billion, down from €2.2 billion, as large Asian and Middle Eastern projects were completed. Offshore Energy grew 9 per cent to €2.1 billion and is now the largest division, with about 55 per cent of its revenue tied to offshore wind: foundation installation in the United States and Poland, cable work for Borkum Riffgrund 3 and Gode Wind 3 in Germany, the DolWin 5 converter platform and the dredging and rock installation for the Porthos carbon-storage pipeline in Rotterdam. Towage & Salvage reached €0.4 billion with Smit Lamnalco consolidated; salvage jobs included the Stena Immaculate tanker after its North Sea collision and the refloating of the ASL Bauhinia.

Capital spending was €564 million on property, plant and equipment, with €237 million of commitments at year end, including four new tugs for Smit Lamnalco’s terminal contract in Guyana. The largest new asset acquired in 2025 was the BOKA Spearfish subsea construction vessel. In January 2025 the company announced the Windpiper conversion, and in May 2026 it ordered the 24,000-tonne cable-lay vessel with two 12,000-tonne carousels, one concentric, designed to lay long high-voltage direct-current cables without offshore joints, for delivery in 2029.

The comparison with 2024 matters. 2024 was already a record, with EBITDA of €1.30 billion including the exceptional gain and net profit of €781 million; the first half of 2025 alone produced EBITDA of €748 million and net profit of €426 million, a 43 per cent increase on the first half of 2024. Boskalis therefore entered 2026 at the top of its cycle.

What happened in the first half of 2026?

The first half of 2026 was a sharp step down: revenue fell to €1.90 billion from €2.35 billion, EBITDA to €553 million from €748 million and net profit to €275 million from €426 million, and the order book slipped to €6.8 billion, mainly because the Middle East conflict and the effective closure of the Persian Gulf halted dredging in the region, idled survey and heavy-transport vessels and limited Smit Lamnalco’s harbour operations while raising its costs. Baartmans described the half as solid in difficult circumstances and said conditions were toughest in Dredging & Inland Infra.

Fleet utilisation fell with the work. Hopper dredger occupancy declined from the high levels of 2025, cutter utilisation was extremely low and the rock-installation vessels were less busy than in the first half of 2025, when the Porthos and Borkum Riffgrund projects had kept them at sea. Offshore Energy had a strong half by any other standard, with the contracting cluster, led by offshore wind projects, performing better than a year earlier and the services cluster weaker, but its order book shrank as large projects moved into execution. Salvage was quiet, which in that business means few emergencies at sea.

New work came in Europe. The Luleå contract in Sweden, awarded in July 2026 to a 50-50 joint venture of Boskalis and Van Oord, is worth about €500 million, covers 14 million cubic metres of sand, clay, moraine and rock over 40 kilometres of fairway and basin, and runs in ice-free seasons from spring 2027 to August 2030; it will let ships of 85,000 tonnes reach a port that serves the fossil-free steel and iron-ore industries of northern Sweden. Boskalis also won extended maintenance dredging at Harwich and Felixstowe in Britain, Smit Lamnalco renewed its Gabon contract, and in October 2026 Boskalis was awarded the inter-array cable installation for Zeevonk phase 1, a contract the company sizes at €50 to €150 million covering 149 kilometres of 66-kilovolt cable between 69 turbines for the Vattenfall and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners joint venture, with offshore work in 2029.

Guidance for the full year is that EBITDA will be stable compared with the first half, which implies a 2026 result around €1.1 billion, down from €1.34 billion. The dredging division’s order book grew during the half, which supports a recovery once the Gulf reopens.

How is Van Oord different from Boskalis?

Van Oord is smaller, privately held by the founding family, and more concentrated in two businesses, dredging and offshore wind, than Boskalis, which has added towage, salvage, heavy transport and subsea services through acquisitions. Founded in 1868 by Govert van Oord in Werkendam, the company grew through the twentieth century, absorbed Ballast Nedam’s dredging business in 2003 and its offshore unit in 2014, bought MPI Offshore from Vroon in 2018 to strengthen its British offshore wind position, and in its last widely reported full year, 2023, had revenue of €2.87 billion, net income of €127 million and about 5,800 employees. The company says it has more than 155 years of experience and describes itself simply as a Dutch family-owned company.

Its ownership is the distinguishing feature. The Van Oord family controls the company through its holding structure, and the chief executive is a family member: Pieter van Oord ran the group from 2008 until 2024, when he left to become chief executive of Schiphol airport, the subject of the KLM and Schiphol story, and was succeeded by Govert van Oord, who shares the founder’s name. Katja Otten is chief financial officer. Private ownership means Van Oord discloses less than Boskalis did as a listed company, publishes an annual report rather than quarterly results and can accept longer payback periods on vessels.

The fleet reflects a bet on wind. Van Oord’s Aeolus, upgraded with a larger crane, began work on a French offshore wind farm in October 2026; the company has invested in the Boreas, a new installation vessel designed for the largest turbine sizes and built to run on methanol, and operates cable-lay and rock-installation ships alongside its hoppers and cutters. Van Oord won the Borssele III and IV wind farms off Zeeland in 2016 as part of a consortium at a then-record low strike price of 54.5 euro cents per megawatt-hour, which marked the point at which Dutch offshore wind became competitive, as the North Sea auctions story explains.

In dredging, the two companies are rivals and partners by turns. They competed on Maasvlakte 2 and then built it together; they are joint venture partners on Luleå, where each takes half of the roughly €500 million contract, after carrying out preparatory dredging of 1.5 million cubic metres there in 2024. The arrangement is typical: on the largest projects the big four form consortia to share equipment and risk, and compete on everything else.

What do the two companies’ numbers look like side by side?

The table below compares the two Dutch contractors using Boskalis’ published results and the most recent widely reported Van Oord figures; Van Oord’s 2025 figures were not available in the sources reviewed for this article.

The scale difference is partly about diversification: Boskalis’ Offshore Energy and Towage & Salvage divisions, built through the Smit, Dockwise and Smit Lamnalco deals, add about €2.5 billion of revenue that Van Oord’s narrower model does not have.

Why is offshore wind the new core business?

Offshore wind has become the core growth market for both companies because every wind farm needs the services dredgers already provide, seabed preparation, rock placement around foundations, cable trenching and heavy lifting, and because the North Sea build-out planned by the Netherlands, Germany, Britain, Denmark and Belgium runs to hundreds of gigawatts over the next two decades. Boskalis’ statement that about 55 per cent of its €2.1 billion Offshore Energy revenue in 2025 was tied to wind, and its decision to spend on a cable-lay vessel and a rock-installation vessel rather than on new hoppers, show where management expects the next cycle.

The cable business is the most specific bet. Electrification and energy independence are driving demand for cross-border interconnectors and for the high-voltage direct-current export cables that connect wind farms to shore, and these require vessels able to carry very long continuous cable lengths. Boskalis’ new vessel, with two 12,000-tonne carousels, is designed for that market; the company already operates three cable-lay vessels and has worked on more than 140 subsea cable projects over 15 years. The Zeevonk contract, which combines survey, seabed intervention by a rock-installation vessel and cable laying by the BOKA Ocean, is the integrated model the company is selling: one contractor for the seabed, the cables and the rock, which reduces the interface risk that has caused cost overruns elsewhere.

Van Oord’s exposure is in installation. Its Aeolus and Boreas vessels place foundations and turbines, and the company has been a consortium partner or contractor on Dutch, British, German and French projects since Borssele. The risk is that the offshore wind market has had a difficult two years: rising interest rates and turbine costs led developers to cancel or renegotiate projects in the United States and Britain in 2023 and 2024, and recent Dutch auctions have attracted less interest than the subsidy-free rounds of 2018 to 2022. The build-out is continuing, but at a pace set by governments’ willingness to pay, which is why the TenneT grid connection programme, which guarantees cable and converter work regardless of individual wind-farm auctions, is as important to the contractors as the wind farms themselves.

What can founders and investors learn from Boskalis and Van Oord?

The two dredgers are a lesson in how a capital-intensive, cyclical industry can produce durable returns when ownership is patient, when capacity is disciplined and when the companies reinvent their core skills for a new market. Four points stand out.

First, in an oligopoly, the winners are those who own the scarcest equipment and keep it busy. Boskalis reports utilisation by vessel class because that is the number that drives its profit; its 2025 record came from hoppers at 32 weeks and rock vessels at 49 weeks, and its 2026 dip came from the same vessels sitting idle. For any business with expensive fixed assets, from aircraft to data centres, the question is not the asset’s capability but its weeks of paid work.

Second, private ownership suits cyclical businesses. HAL’s purchase of Boskalis at the bottom of a cycle and Van Oord’s 157 years of family ownership both reflect a judgement that public markets price contractors on their worst year. The counterargument is that delisting removes the discipline of quarterly disclosure; Boskalis still publishes detailed results because it has bondholders and clients who demand them. Founders choosing between listing and private capital should ask whether their business’s volatility will be punished by the market, and whether they have a long-term owner who will not.

Third, acquire the capabilities the next market needs before the market arrives. Boskalis bought Smit, Dockwise and Fairmount between 2010 and 2013, well before offshore wind became its largest market, and the heavy-lift, transport and subsea skills they brought are what it sells to wind developers now. The cable-lay vessel ordered in 2026 for 2029 delivery is the same logic applied forward.

Fourth, cooperate where the project is bigger than any one balance sheet. Boskalis and Van Oord are competitors who built Maasvlakte 2 together and will build Luleå together. In industries where a single contract can be worth a year’s profit, sharing risk with a rival is not weakness but risk management, a lesson that applies as much to the onshore contractors BAM and VolkerWessels as to the marine ones.

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