Strabag, part of the Skanska Costain Strabag (SCS) JV building the London end of HS2 phase one, was awarded the contract to manufacture more than 83,000 segments in October 2021.
It has invested £50m in an old oil rig fabrication yard in Hartlepool docks, fitting it out with an automated segment carousel and reinforcement hall. Robots controlled by telemetry produce the reinforcement cages required for each segment. Strabag is sourcing aggregate from local quarries and using UK recycled steel.
Over the next three years more than 83,000 precast tunnel segments will be produced and shipped by train 250 miles from Hartlepool to London – 96 concrete segments rings will be produced each day at the site, with teams of 30 working in shifts across 24 hours, seven days a week.
They will be used to construct 3.4 miles of twin bored tunnel for the Northolt tunnel east, and five miles of twin bored tunnel for the Euston tunnel between Old Oak Common and Euston. Each ring has an 8.8-metre outside diameter, is 350mm thick and weighs seven tonnes.
From this summer, a 20-carriage train will leave Hartlepool every day, six days a week, increasing to two a day as production increases.
The Hartlepool factory was originally expected to begin production in December 2022. A Strabag spokesperson explained the slippage: “In repurposing the old, disused building, the remediation of the contaminated industrial site and structural upgrades took longer than anticipated. However, HS2 and Strabag considered this improvement work necessary to not only create a fit-for-purpose factory environment but also to ensure the longevity of the site which will benefit the local economy in Hartlepool for years to come. Nevertheless, Strabag remains on programme to meet the dates for segment delivery to the HS2 programme.”
Strabag UK managing director Andy Dixon said: “This is an extremely exciting day for Strabag’s UK operations. Our new factory in Hartlepool allows us to manufacture products for HS2 in the northeast of England by giving new life to a vacant site and bringing over 100 new skilled jobs to the area. The increased use of automation enhances production efficiency, creates a safer environment for our staff as well as creating new technology related job opportunities.”
He also claimed that it was more environmentally friendly to have production 250 miles away from the site itself. (Align, by contrast, makes its linings on site, but it has more space.)
“Having direct access to the rail network means that we can take a significant number of lorries off of UK roads. This creates a more sustainable solution in the way that we transport tunnel segment rings to the tunnel boring machines (TBMs) building the London tunnels for HS2, resulting in a reduction in our carbon footprint,” Andy Dixon argued.
Further tunnel segments are being made for SCS JV by a Spanish company, Pacadar, in the Isle of Grain, Kent, which is only 50 miles away. Pacadar previously supplied 7.5 miles of tunnel segments for the Thames Tideway project. Pacadar is making 550 tunnel rings for the 853-metre logistics tunnel between Atlas Road and the Old Oak Common station site as well as 8,447 tunnel rings for the 16km-long Northolt tunnel west section, the longest tunnel within SCS JV’s section. Production for this tunnel began 18 months ago, with no delays, Pacadar reports. [See previous report here.]
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