When the Channel Tunnel officially opened on May 6, 1994, connecting the United Kingdom and France beneath the English Channel, it marked the realization of a centuries-old dream. Few people know, however, that Flemish companies including DEME played a role long before the first trains began running.

In 1988, Hydro Soil Services (HSS), a joint venture between Dredging International and Smet Boring, was among the first contractors active on the British side of the project. Working for the TransManche Link consortium, HSS helped prepare the site at the foot of the iconic Shakespeare Cliff near Dover, where one of the largest infrastructure projects of the twentieth century was taking shape.

A key part of the assignment was the construction of an artificial peninsula that would receive millions of cubic meters of material excavated from the three tunnel bores. To execute the works, HSS deployed its self-elevating platform Tijl II, while Dredging International sent the backhoe dredger Zenne to support the operation. Together, they helped create a series of lagoons behind a double sheet-pile wall extending more than two kilometers along the coast.

The project was far from straightforward. The exposed coastline near Dover is notorious for severe southwesterly storms, making the installation of the sheet-pile walls and the positioning of equipment a challenging undertaking. Yet the work was completed successfully, demonstrating the expertise and ingenuity that would become hallmarks of DEME projects around the world.

While the Channel Tunnel itself was built by an international consortium, Dredging International and HSS were there from the very beginning, helping lay the groundwork for what would become one of Europe's most iconic engineering achievements.