China-built tunneling machine leaves to build NZ's biggest road project

The world's 10th biggest tunnel boring machine (TBM) has left its manufacturer in China and is en route to help in the construction of New Zealand's biggest-ever road project, the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) announced Thursday.

The state-of-the-art machine was designed and built over 14 months at Germany's Herrenknecht factory in Guangzhou, south China 's Guangdong Province, specifically to drill twin 2.4-km tunnels

each wide enough for three lanes of traffic for Auckland's expanding motorway system.

The TBM's circular cutting head was more than 14 meters wide the equivalent of a building four storeys high.

The tunnel project to complete a Western Ring Route around New Zealand's largest city would cost the government agency 1.4 billion NZ dollars, NZTA Auckland and Northland state highways manager Tommy Parker said in a statement.

The 87-meter-long machine was expected to arrive in Auckland later this month in 97 separate parts and it would be reassembled by a team of 30 in a 30-meter-deep trench at the tunneling site over three months.

"We are planning to have traffic using the tunnels by the end of 2016, which will give Auckland the connected and cohesive motorway system it needs to support growth in the region," Parker said.

It was the largest machine ever built for use in Australasia, and had been designed specifically for the local geology.

"Delivery and assembly of the TBM will be complex the start of a construction process that will lift the development of New Zealand's transport infrastructure to a whole new level," Parker said.

Moving at a speed of 80 mm a minute, or 0.0005 km per hour, the TBM was expected to take a year to complete the first tunnel.

The NZTA said in March last year that the TBM would cost 50 million NZ dollars ($38.95 million).