Skip to main content

North African roads

Morocco has a rapidly expanding road network, which is benefiting from expertise offered by French contractor Colas. The quality of Morocco's roads is higher than in many other African countries, with much of this due to the use of the latest road construction technology by Colas. It previously took almost two days to go from Casablanca to Tan Tan in the south and this journey now takes less than eight hours. Colas has some 800 machines and vehicles in Morocco, with 70 graders, 70 wheeled loaders, 50 excava
February 8, 2012 Read time: 2 mins
Morocco has a rapidly expanding road network, which is benefiting from expertise offered by French contractor 184 Colas. The quality of Morocco's roads is higher than in many other African countries, with much of this due to the use of the latest road construction technology by Colas.

It previously took almost two days to go from Casablanca to Tan Tan in the south and this journey now takes less than eight hours. Colas has some 800 machines and vehicles in Morocco, with 70 graders, 70 wheeled loaders, 50 excavators, 50 compactors, 30 bulldozers, six articulated haulers and a lot of smaller vehicles. 2394 Volvo supplies 30 of these larger machines, including G900 graders, L120F wheel loaders, excavators of 22-45tonnes and a dozen asphalt pavers including Volvo's latest ABG7820 paver. Colas has doubled its business in Morocco over the last five years, benefiting from increased government spending on its road network.

However, harsh conditions make building roads in desert conditions difficult. The heat affects the wearing course, but this can be solved using admixtures to the asphalt, however the occasional rainstorm breaks up the structure and can be heavy and destructive. Meanwhile traffic volumes have grown significantly and the country has had to develop its network significantly. With contracts to build 150km of highway near Morocco's border with Mauritania, a 40km road through the mountains near Casablanca and a host of other projects, Colas hopes to win more business in the future.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Improvements to China's first desert expressway
    April 4, 2013
    The latest asphalt paving technology is now available and being utilised in novel ways to build and improve roads, often in challenging applications. Tough working environments, strict project deadlines and precise quality requirements are all posing engineering challenges for road construction projects around the world. For a number of asphalt paving applications, novel approaches and new technology are being employed to deliver projects on time and within specifications. In China, improvements to the coun
  • Versatile articulated dump truck
    February 10, 2012
    Articulated dump trucks offers a versatile solution for earthmoving needs, Mike Woof reports. The articulated dump truck is now used worldwide in a huge array of earthmoving applications. The market for these versatile machines was developed largely in Northern Europe at first, before spreading to other areas of the world and ADTs can now be regarded as pieces of equipment with global appeal for earthmoving and extraction applications.
  • Major advances in asphalt paving technology
    February 9, 2012
    Using the latest paving technology has allowed contractors to carry out difficult projects Contractors in Germany and Italy have been able to carry out very difficult asphalt paving applications, using the latest machines from Vögele and Volvo Construction Equipment respectively. In both instances these projects benefited greatly from the use of the latest generation equipment and it is debatable as to whether such high quality results could have been achieved with older machines.
  • US RCC paving job carried out with Volvo CE machines
    October 21, 2016
    US contractor Conewago Enterprises is using a paver from Volvo CE to lay a roller-compacted concrete (RCC) surface at the Liberty Trust distribution centre in Shippensburg, Pennsylvania. This facility lies close to Interstate-81, which runs through the Appalachian Mountains from the Canada-US border to Tennessee. This 1,376km route carries heavy truck traffic and as a result, hundreds of distribution warehouses have being constructed along the route of this busy transport corridor. Conewago Enterpris