The St. Germain a hopper dredge owned by the French company STFMO was supplied as new building project in 2001, at Damen Shipyards Gorinchem The Netherlands.
The specific design of this vessel offers the possibility to extract sand from the sea bottom and discharge it subsequently inland along the riverside.
Passing low bridges on its way to unloading quay.

Hycos produced the hydraulic installation and the dredging control system. The hydraulic installation drives among other items;

• Elevating wheelhouse
• Collapsible for- and aft masts
• Trailing suction pipe handling installation
• Wave compensator
• Dredge valve system
• Overflow valves
• Bottom doors
• Deck Winches
• Dredge-pump
• Jet-water system valves and monitors
• Auxiliary deck-crane

The hydraulic installation consist a central power-pack with two adjustable axial piston pumps each driven by a 30 Kw electric motor.The power-pack is capable to provide the whole system with a continuous pressure of 250 Bar.
During design works of their power-packs, extra attention is paid by Hycos to the filtration system. As a result the highest cleaning rates according ISO are achieved.
The advanced dredge operating panel, is based on Windows 2000 PC operating system and consist of a conventional operating panel and two 15”TFT Touch screens.
A well organised menu offers several additional operating and control features at the operators convenience.
The applied Master / Slave system reduced the use of electrical conventional wiring and cables on board significantly.
Signals from trailing suction pipe position, sand-pump, valve positions and hydraulic valves are transferred as data between their positions and the PC / PLC control-panel