The Port of Açu in Brazil, built by FCC Construcción, has won an award in the Innovation category at the Cais Açu Lab Awards. The Port of Açu is located 315 kilometres north of Rio de Janeiro. It is the third largest port in the world and the largest on the American continent as a deep-water outer port, with a total planned capacity of 350 million tonnes per year.

It was a complex civil engineering project, as evidenced by its magnitude. The project consisted of the construction of a 2,438-metre-long caisson quay, which was carried out by manufacturing and anchoring 49 reinforced concrete caissons, and a 600-metre-long sloping breakwater. The large caissons have an average length of 45 metres, a beam of 24 metres and struts between 18 and 29 metres.

Due to the complexity of the new breakwater, the first nine caissons were built in Algeciras (Cadiz), as the Brazilian port did not yet have the necessary facilities to carry out this task. These caissons were transported from the port of Algeciras to Açu on semi-submersible vessels in a 15-day voyage, covering the 4,300 nautical miles (equivalent to 7,960 kilometres) between the two ports.

The caisson vessels, Mar del Aneto and Mar del Enol, owned by FCC Construcción, were responsible for manufacturing the caissons and will also make the transoceanic crossing. Once in Açu, the nine caissons formed the area where the two floating docks were located. The foundation construction work was carried out by, among other vessels, the dredgers Bocami and Acanto, owned by FCC.

The contract also included other activities such as the preliminary dredging of the seabed, with 4,100,000 m3 dredged to an average depth of 31 m, the superstructure works to complete the docks and the provision of nautical and buoyage equipment.

The port is located within the Açu Superport Industrial Complex, an area of 90 square kilometres, equivalent to 2.5 times the size of Manhattan Island, and will have two terminals with 17 kilometres of quays and 40 berths. These will be able to accommodate ships with a cargo capacity of up to 400,000 tonnes.

The new facilities will enable the port to receive shipments of iron, oil, steel, coal and granite and will allow the mooring of ships known as Capsize, with a capacity of 220,000 tonnes. The new Açu Superport has great potential for the oil and gas industry due to its proximity to the Campos Basin, one of the country's largest oil-producing areas.