Webuild Celebrates Commissioning of Third TBM For Snowy 2.0

Webuild recently joined workers of the Future Generation joint-venture, partners and community members to celebrate the commissioning of Florence, the third and final tunnel boring machine (TBM) for Snowy 2.0, Australia’s largest hydropower project.

The TBM is set to start excavating an adit to the planned headrace tunnel at Tantangara, one of two reservoirs that will be part of the pumped storage scheme in the Snowy Mountains. The technologically advanced machine is 143 m long with a cutterhead 11 m in diameter. Designed to manage hazardous dust and poor ground conditions while tunnelling up to 450 m underground, it will excavate 15.4 km of the 17-km headrace tunnel.

Snowy 2.0 will have 2,000 megawatts of pumping and generating capacity – enough to power 500,000 homes.

Australia’s strategy to invest billions to develop its infrastructure has confirmed it as a core market for Webuild. In just four years, its contribution to total revenues has increased to 10% in 2021 from 3%. During the same period, it came to be responsible for 13% from 1% of the value of total construction orders in the Group’s backlog, more than any other single market outside Italy.

The country’s importance to Webuild was reinforced with the recent news of the Group and its consortium partners becoming the preferred bidders for the Inland Rail section. It would bring to four the number of projects for Webuild in the country, bringing their combined contribution to the construction order backlog to more than €6 billion.