The Tunnel to Success

There’s no doubt about it – opportunities for tunnelling specialists are growing.

“With the Central Government focusing on improving infrastructure, especially in the less connected north and northeast to pave the way for more industrial activity, we expect opportunities for tunnelling to grow,” says Prabhat Mittal, Associate Vice President, Sandvik Mining. “Until a few years ago we were seeing demand primarily for hydro projects; recently, we have seen substantial demand for road, railways and defence projects,” says Soma Chakrabarty, Director, Eurostar Engineering, which offers Cifa shotcreting equipment in India.

With most tunnels in India designed from the outset to be constructed using the drill-and-blast method, it is the “expansion of metro systems in Bengaluru, Chennai and Delhi that offer the best short to medium-term opportunities for tunnel boring machine (TBM) deployment”, according to Manoj Garg, Managing Director, Herrenknecht India. “In the medium to long term, India’s ambitious plans to build an extensive high-speed rail network offer opportunities. Early reports indicate that the high-speed route between Mumbai and Ahmedabad alone might require a 20-km-long subsea tunnel.”

Towards eco-friendly tunnelling