13 April 2016 CREG

Among the various types of TBMs displayed in the booth of CREG at Bauma 2016, a special member of CREG TBM family is worthy of particular mention. It is a hard rock TBM modeled on the 3.53m diameter machine designed and manufactured by CREG for the Great Beirut Water Supply Project. To accommodate millions of parts inside the relatively small space, the Kelly-type TBM is quite complicated.

Apart from sustaining the classic design of Wirth, CREG applied the back-loaded cutters to such a small diameter TBM for the first time. Furthermore, designs like small cutter spacing and nonlinear layout of cutters consolidate the rock breaking capacities of the machine considerably. According to the delivery schedule, the first of the two ordered machines has already arrived at Beirut in late March 2016.

Many international clients at Bauma 2016 asked how CREG was related to Wirth. That’s a long story dating back to CREG people using the first TBM in China railway project in 1997, but the significant day fell on 26 December 2013 when CREG acquired the intellectual property of Wirth hard rock TBM, the brand use right and related business. Afterwards, CREG Germany was founded. To implement the strategy of localization, CREG hires the core technical staff including the former president of Wirth as the senior consultant of CREG and also dispatches CREG Chinese engineers to CREG Germany to exchange ideas and experiences with German experts.