Segment production starts for Brenner Lot H41

9 February 2023


Production of the segments for Lot H41 Sillschlucht-Pfons – one of the largest of the Brenner Base Tunnel – starts today.

Over the next two-and-a-half years a factory on the construction site at Ahrental will produce around 51,000 segments for the section stretching from the Sill gorge near Innsbruck via the Ahrental valley to Navis.

Romed Insam, project manager of construction lot H41, said the onsite production would remove the need for 27,000 lorry movements.

“This corresponds to our claim to make the construction process of the Brenner Base Tunnel as efficient as possible and at the same time to protect the environmental resources of the areas affected by the project in the best possible way,” he said.

In January, the first components of the Herrenknecht TBM Lilia began arriving on site. The consortium of Implenia, Webuild and CSC will launch the 10.37m diameter TBM from the Ahrental assembly chamber in spring. It will travel south to excavate 8.1km of the eastern main tunnel.

Lot H41 Sill Gorge-Pfons comprises the construction of the main tunnels heading north to Innsbruck and south to Pfons. Approximately 5.7km will be excavated using conventional construction methods and around 16.4km by TBM. Interior work will also be carried out on the main tunnels, the Innsbruck emergency stop and the exploratory tunnel. The work, valued at €651m (US$698m), is expected to take around 80 months.

The Brenner Base Tunnel will be a 55km railway tunnel stretching from Innsbruck in Austria and Fortezza in Italy. Linking to an existing line south of Innsbruck, it will create the world’s longest underground railway connection.