Dredging | Marine Construction | Ship Repair | Marinas Strong work ethic for getting the job done well. From the moment in 1964 when Dutch immigrant Willem Kroef founded the bones of Heron Construction, a strong work ethic chiseled a reputation for getting the job done and done well. “You can buy as many pieces of good plant as you like, but unless you have the right people operating that plant and managing the projects you wont last very long at all,” says Greg Kroef, the current Managing Director and whose ‘Opa’ started the business. From its roots building concrete pump stations, culverts and bridges, in the late ‘60s Heron Construction got into dredging using cutter suction dredges working on projects in rivers, lakes and harbours and was involved in the building of many of New Zealand’s marinas between the 1970s and ‘90s. Progressively, the business focused more on the marine side of things getting into bigger dredges, plant and equipment and expanding into tugs and bigger barges, bringing the business to where it is now. In 2018 the company bought a shipyard in Whangarei. Called Heron Ship Repair, the yard boasts a large 1800 tonne commercial slipway where it maintains tugs, barges, fishing vessels and ferries. “Essentially we support the marine industry throughout New Zealand,” says Greg. “With our work on marinas we offer a turn-key solution where we can do the dredging, build and install pontoons through our marine construction divisions.” In September of 2023, Heron Construction successfully completed a project to deepen South Port’s (Bluff) entrance channel, comprised of extremely hard granite rock. South Port had approached a number of major dredging companies all over the world to get budget pricing to undertake the project, before contacting Heron Construction. “We started developing a range of options for how to complete the project in a way that met South Port’s budget limitations, and eventually entered into an ECI contract,” says Greg. “Because of environmental constraints, there’s a set period of time when dredging activities are permitted so we completed the project over two phases. Dredging commenced in August 2022, and ceased in September of that year, with the second phase commencing in August the following year and concluding in September.” Greg says of particular interest was that much of the hard work was actually done during the late ‘70s and early ‘80s when drilling contractors drilled and blasted the channel and then attempted to dredge the rock. “The problem was that the dredging equipment available in those days didn’t have the capacity to raise the blasted rock out of the sea bed. This was actually discovered in historical records. While South Port had obtained consent enabling drilling and blasting activities, and then dredging, we were able to dredge without having to drill and blast. So, it was a great success environmentally.” Reflecting on what Heron Construction brings to complex projects such as South Port’s, Greg says that apart from capability and experience, it is all about that Kiwi ‘can-do’ experience that was forged by his forefathers. “We look outside of the box and think how we can do it, using the plant, equipment and people that we have, to achieve a successful outcome cost effectively.”
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