The factory that will produce more than 24,000 concrete segments to line the motorway tunnels for the NZ Transport Agency’s Waterview Connection project has been officially opened by Auckland mayor, Len Brown.
The 6000 square metre factory in East Tamaki has created 70 new jobs, and is the most modern pre-cast concrete manufacturing facility in Australasia.
The factory will manufacture the linings for Waterview’s 2.4km-long twin tunnels, each built to endure 100 years of demanding use.
The Transport Agency’s highway manager, Tommy Parker says: “The factory is an entirely new facility, built by a partnership between the tunnel project’s Well-Connected Alliance and Auckland company Wilson Tunnelling.
“It has created 70 new jobs, almost all of which have been filled by people from the factory’s neighbourhood in Auckland South,” says Parker.
The new factory is expected to become a major consumer for locally-produced aggregate and cement over the next two year.
Waterview’s twin tunnels are the key feature of the new six-lane, 5km motorway being built for the Transport Agency by the Well-Connected Alliance in west Auckland.
It will join the south-western and north-western motorways (State Highways 20 and 16) to complete the city’s 48km-long ‘western ring route’ – one of the Government’s ‘national roads of significance’ – which cannot come soon enough for transport operators.
The lining for the Waterview tunnels will comprise 2414, 14m-diameter rings of concrete, each two metres wide and each comprising 10 segments. Nine of the segments will weigh 10.5 tonnes while the tenth will be a smaller ‘key’ segment that locks the ring together.
Parker says production of the individual segments for each ring began in August. It is planned to have 180 rings completed by the time ‘Alice’ – the project’s tunnel boring machine – is launched later this year.
Inside the tunnels, the concrete segments will be installed by ‘Alice’ as she bores her way underground.
‘Alice’ will install six lining rings every 24-hours with the new pre-cast factory manufacturing 40 rings (400 segments) per week using four sets of specially designed moulds.
