On August 1, the D2 Bid Project Department of the Beibu Gulf Rim Guangxi Water Resources Allocation Project welcomed a key milestone — the TBM (full-face hard rock tunnel boring machine) was officially launched. This milestone event marks the entry of the project construction into a stage of rapid advancement and will inject strong momentum into solving the water resources allocation challenges in the Beibu Gulf Rim area of Guangxi.

This TBM is the first dual-shield TBM independently owned by Sinohydro Bureau 5 Co., Ltd., with a designed diameter of 4,630 mm, a total length of approximately 400 meters, a total installed power of 3,398.5 kW, a total weight of about 1,000 tons, and an excavation diameter of 4.63 meters. It is equipped with advanced functions such as "intelligent guidance" and "advanced geological forecasting." With advantages including a high degree of automation, high construction precision, and minimal environmental impact, it can efficiently overcome construction challenges such as "complex geology," "high overburden depth," and "high-strength rock strata." Its material transport and cooling systems have been enhanced, and it adopts an efficient continuous belt conveyor for mucking. It features rapid excavation, timely support, and online monitoring, and can adapt to complex geological environments.

The Beibu Gulf Rim Guangxi Water Resources Allocation Project takes the Yu River as its core water source and, mainly through six water conveyance trunk lines, connects 12 rivers and 15 reservoirs in Guangxi, forming a water network pattern of internal connection and external allocation with regional mutual supplementation. It supplies water for urban and rural domestic and industrial use in key cities such as Nanning, Beihai, Qinzhou, and Yulin, and creates conditions for improving agricultural irrigation and the water ecological environment. This project is the cross-basin water resources allocation project with the highest investment, the longest route, and the largest beneficiary population in Guangxi to date. Once completed, it can restore and improve 1.3 million mu of irrigated area, add more than 200,000 tons of grain production capacity, and boost rural revitalization. At the same time, in terms of ecological benefits, the project can return 154 million cubic meters of ecological environmental water to major rivers such as the Nanliu River and the Qin River, and reduce groundwater extraction in Beihai and other areas by 199 million cubic meters, greatly improving the ecological environment of rivers, lakes, and urban and rural areas.