Tunnel boring machines: Machines for India delayed, German firm flags bottleneck at Chinese customs

Recently, in a video of an interaction between Goyal and Habeck during a Metro train ride in Delhi, the Commerce Minister was heard telling Habeck that India was to get some TBMs from Herrenknecht that the company was making in China, but China was not allowing the sale of those machines to India. Habeck, who is also Germany’s economic affairs minister, was in Delhi as part of a high-level delegation led by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

An independent family-owned company, Herrenknecht is seen as a global major in mechanised tunnelling and manufacturing of TBMs. These large machines are used to excavate tunnels for infrastructure projects. The company has been involved with a number of projects in India, where it operates through its subsidiary Herrenknecht India, which is based out of Chennai.

“In India, Herrenknecht’s machines and equipment are used for civil infrastructure projects like hydroelectric, railways, roads, water, sewerage projects including the expansion or construction of metro networks in Delhi, Kanpur, Agra, Chennai, Mumbai, Kolkata, Ahmedabad and many more cities,” the company said.

It declined to comment on the number of TBMs that were to be delivered to Indian customers but are stuck in China. It also declined to provide details about the Indian customers and the projects for which these TBMs are intended to be used.

“Due to contractual agreements with our customers, we ask for your understanding that we will not make any statements about specific projects, delivery scopes, or the status of individual machines,” Herrenknecht said in response to the queries.

The main location of Herrenknecht is in Schwanau, Germany, where “innovations are developed that customers use in projects worldwide”, the company said. Schwanau is also home to Herrenknecht’s central production facility. Overall, the company operates from over 60 locations globally as part of its strategy to be able to offer services close to project sites.

It has a few manufacturing and assembly plants in China, where the company has been involved with numerous infrastructure projects for over two decades.

“In addition to the USA and Thailand, steel fabrication and pre- as well as final assembly of tunnel boring machines also take place at locations in India and China. Key functional units of the machines and technological core components still predominantly come from the manufacturing site in Schwanau. They are completed at one of our assembly sites with large steel structures mostly manufactured in the production regions,” the company said.

“This allows our customers to verify the functionality of the machines in their entirety at one location and rely on consistently high-quality standards. The globally positioned production network enables Herrenknecht to optimally utilise production capacities and optimise delivery times,” Herrenknecht said in its response.