FCC, through its Austrian subsidiary ALPINE, is building a 25-kilometre water main tunnel in Pinglu, located in the Chinese province of Shanxi, west of Beijing; the project will cost 47 million euro.
The tunnel is part of the Yellow River Diversion Project's North Main, and it will transfer water from the Yellow River to the arid regions of Pinglu, Shouzhou and Datong. ALPINE recently completed the first section of the project, boring 13 km underground to the Dalian gallery; it will now bore the remaining 12 km of the gallery.
Despite challenging geological conditions, ALPINE has successfully bored an average of 750 metres per month. Since the project began in 2006, the company has been required to work in very geologically demanding areas, including 12-metre thick coal beds. ALPINE is using a special state-of-the-art telescopic double shield boring machine which provides continuous support for the terrain as the machine advances.
To sheathe the 4.8-metre wide tunnel, ALPINE will use 83,450 concrete components produced in the company's own on-site workshop, where 54,200 components have been produced to date.
ALPINE's successful projects in China
At the end of the 90s, ALPINE built two pumping stations as part of the Yellow River Diversion Project. On China's east coast, ALPINE built the 42-kilometre Ningbo-Shengzhou Expressway. Currently, ALPINE has six projects under way ranging from factory buildings through sports complexes to schools.
ALPINE operates worldwide. With 2.595 billion euro in revenues in 2007 and close to 14,300 employees, ALPINE is one of Austria's three largest construction companies. In 2007, ALPINE landed new contracts worth over 3 billion euro.
ALPINE's experience in tunnel construction
ALPINE has built the Pfänder, Tradenberg and Katschberg tunnels in Austria, among others, and has been working on the St. Gotthard Base Tunnel in Switzerland since 2001.
ALPINE is also building tunnels in India, where it has collaborated on various sections of New Delhi's new underground network and on the headrace tunnel at the Tapovan hydroelectric plant. The company is working on Singapore's underground network and headrace tunnels at power plants in Bulgaria and Turkey.
