The Port of Melbourne Corporation has completed its 2009-11 routine maintenance dredging programme three weeks ahead of schedule and within budget.

The project, which began in November 2009, included dredging and sweeping of dredged material.

The port corporation said that sediment in the port was capped with around 250,000m2 of clean sand recovered from the South East DMG by deploying the trailing suction hopper dredge Cornelis Zanen.

The corporation said it had dredged around 325,600m2 of sediment, according to portofmelbourne.com.