DORMAC Durban is a ship repair and engineering yard in the Bayhead precinct of the Port of Durban, inside the port's ship repair zone and a short distance from the graving dock. The trading entity is Dormac Marine and Engineering (Pty) Ltd, and the name comes from the 2000 merger of Dorbyl Marine Durban with International Marine & Construction. The Durban business dates from 1903, and Dorbyl's interest passed to Southey Holdings in 2004. In 2022 the Durban lease with Transnet was extended by a further twenty years. This entry covers Durban alone: Cape Town, Saldanha Bay, Richards Bay and Walvis Bay are separate sites and none of their facilities are counted here.
Three docks serve the yard. The Prince Edward Graving Dock, built in 1925, is port-owned infrastructure that DORMAC works under its Transnet lease rather than owns; it subdivides into an outer and an inner compartment, so two vessels can be taken at once, and dockside cranes run from 8 to 50 tonnes. Two floating docks are DORMAC's own, each lifting 8,500 tonnes. Dock 1 has been in service since September 2016 and carries two 7.5-tonne cranes; Dock 2, built in 1986 by Pallada Shipyard in Ukraine, came into service in 2022 and is fitted with a vehicle access ramp. Dock 1 lies on its own quay inside a 7,200 square metre laydown area. A 60-tonne self-propelled floating crane, the Imvubu, was added in 2023 and works both docks.
Afloat repair is at a private quay with 8 metres of water, served by a Liebherr luffing crane lifting 50 tonnes at a 30-metre radius and backed by a hatch repair area sized for up to thirty-seven 30-tonne hatches, and at a second quay with 7 metres. A construction slipway takes smaller craft under Goliath cranes of 120 and 25 tonnes. The workshop of 1,300 square metres runs in three bays, for fabrication and welding, for heavy machining under two 25-tonne overhead cranes, and for light machining and fitting, with a furnace sized for shafts, rudder stock and tail shafts. Outdoor grillages give 120 metres of underhook for barges and accommodation modules.
Ship repair covers dry docking and afloat work, conversion and upgrade, on tankers, passenger vessels, container ships, bulk carriers and naval vessels. A second line serves offshore oil and gas, in semi-submersibles, jack-up rigs, drillships and support vessels; the company entered that market in 2010 and carried out its first jack-up rig upgrade at Saldanha Bay in 2012. A third handles industrial fabrication. Specialist work includes a cofferdam DORMAC designed and patented for underwater repair without docking, riser refurbishment certified by Cameron, diving, and riding squads placed aboard vessels in other ports. Management systems are certified by DNV to ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and ISO 45001.
