On the afternoon of December 4, Meng Fengchao, Chairman and Party Secretary of China Railway Construction Corporation (CRCC), and his delegation met in Taipei with Yao Zuxiang, Chairman of Taiwan's Asia Engineering Group (parent company of Ronggong Engineering), and Hong Yiqian, CEO of Taiwan's Xinlu Holding Group (parent company of Continental Engineering).
Meng Fengchao, together with Yao Zuxiang and Hong Yiqian, witnessed the signing ceremony of the contract for four 6-meter-class shield tunneling machines for the Taipei MRT Wanda Line, to be supplied by CRCHI to the Taiwan region.
The successful signing of this contract marks the entry of mainland underground construction equipment into the Taiwan region, successfully breaking Japan's monopoly of this market for over 30 years.
In the field of industrial manufacturing, Germany and Japan have long been hailed as the "gears of world industry," and in underground engineering construction in the Taiwan region, Japanese-made shield tunneling machines have been predominantly used for a long time. This time, however, the procurement of domestic shield tunneling machines developed by CRCHI for the Taipei MRT Wanda Line is no coincidence.
In 2008, CRCC laid out its high-end underground engineering equipment industry, focusing on shield tunneling machines and rock tunnel boring machines (TBMs), and built a high-end underground equipment industrial base in Changsha.
At that time, domestic shield tunneling machine brands had just started, and the domestic industry landscape was dominated by foreign enterprises from technology to market. As the core enterprise of CRCC's industrial manufacturing sector, CRCHI bravely shouldered the role of the main force in strengthening, optimizing, and expanding CRCC's industrial profit-generating sector, and the new force in the transformation and upgrading of China's high-end equipment manufacturing. Over 10 years, by fully utilizing CRCC's long-accumulated construction technology and experience and continuously advancing independent technological innovation, a large number of global and domestic first-of-their-kind machines have been rolled off the production line. Today, this industry landscape has been reversed.
Over the years, relying on urban subway, intercity railway, and high-speed railway tunnel projects, CRCHI has boldly innovated independently, breaking through core technologies such as the overall design of shield tunneling machines, integration of large-scale electromechanical-hydraulic complex systems, geological adaptability under complex tunnel geological conditions, and comprehensive control of shield tunneling attitude. It has successively developed earth pressure balance shield tunneling machines and slurry balance shield tunneling machine series products, driving qualitative changes in the development and industrialization of domestic shield tunneling machines.
According to statistics, for high-end underground engineering equipment represented by shield tunneling machines and TBMs, the global market share of domestic brands was less than one-tenth 10 years ago, and now they occupy two-thirds of the global market share. At present, the shield tunneling machines independently developed by CRCHI have continuously occupied "half of the domestic market" for four consecutive years. TBMs and large-diameter shield tunneling machines with a market share of over 85% are widely used in key projects such as subways, railways, and water conservancy in more than 30 provinces and cities across the country, and have been successfully exported to countries and regions such as Russia and Turkey.
It is reported that the Taipei MRT Wanda Line is an important transportation artery under construction in Taipei. The total lengths of the up and down lines of the CQ850 and CQ850A sections are 2,754 meters and 3,417 meters, respectively. During the tunneling process, the shield tunneling machines need to overcome geological and construction challenges such as a 50-meter ultra-small turning radius, passing under the pile foundations of the Shuanghe Bridge, in-situ deviation through the ventilation shaft section, and encountering diaphragm walls along the route.
At the signing ceremony, Liu Feixiang, Party Secretary and Chairman of CRCHI, introduced that in the early stage of technical scheme design, the CRCHI R&D team conducted detailed research and demonstration around the individualized requirements proposed by the project, especially for the small turning radius, and submitted a highly customized and highly targeted technical scheme, which was ultimately recognized by the user.
"The higher construction standards and strict review system in the Taiwan region have also trained the company's technical and marketing teams, providing valuable experience for CRCHI to continue to deeply cultivate the Taiwan market and open up other regional markets," said Liu Feixiang.
The first batch of equipment will be delivered and put into use in 2018. CRCHI will subsequently provide customers with full life-cycle services including design, manufacturing, production, on-site assembly and commissioning, trial tunneling, and after-sales service.