The story
Founded by Martin Herrenknecht in 1977.1
Martin Herrenknecht established the Martin Herrenknecht engineering company in 1975; it initially had six employees. Two years later, it became Herrenknecht GmbH, at which point it had a capital of 20 million euros. By 1984, Herrenknecht had opened Herrenknecht International Ltd. in Sunderland, England, its first foreign subsidiary.
During the late 1980s, the company became involved with Maschinen und Stahlbau GmbH of Dresden. Following the merger of the two companies in 1988, Herrenknecht became a joint-stock company (AG). Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, the company pursued an expansion strategy to achieve worldwide operations.
During the late 1990s, Herrenknecht built a TBM with a diameter of 14.20m, which was the largest in the world at that time, for a project to increase the capacity of the Elbe Tunnel in Hamburg, Germany (completed in 2002). The boring of the world's longest and deepest railway tunnel, the Gotthard Base Tunnel in Switzerland, was performed using the company's machinery; excavation was completed in 2009, roughly six months ahead of schedule. That same year, Herrenknecht delivered a pair of TBMs with a diameter of 15.43m, then the largest in the world, for the boring of two large tunnels under Shanghai, China.
In December 2012, Herrenknecht acquired Techni-Métal Systemes SAS, a French manufacturer of tunnel supply vehicles; the move expanded the company's portfolio to comprise all technical equipment and services relating to TBMs. Three years later, Herrenknecht launched its first horizontal directional drilling HDD rock cutting tools, which enabled the company to cover the complete drilling process.
By 2015, the company had around 5,000 employees, roughly two-thirds of which worked at the company's headquarters in the installation of hydraulic and electronic components and final inspection. Furthermore, 300 staff worked at three locations across China. In 2015, Herrenknecht had 82 subsidiaries around the world and has worked on 2,600 projects. During the 2010s, the company developed a new semi-trenchless method for pipeline installation; by 2019, roughly 380 km of new pipelines were being installed worldwide using Herrenknecht's technology.
During 2014, the company reported a record level of orders at 1.2 billion euros, which was primarily attributed to its involvement in the construction of multiple metro expansion schemes across the Middle East and Asia. In the mid 2010s, eight Herrenknecht-built TBMs, valued at £10 million, were deployed to bore a 13 mile stretch of tunnel for Crossrail, a mostly-underground commuter railway line beneath London, England.
In May 2020, workers on the Brenner Base Tunnel reportedly set a new record for hard rock tunnel, boring a distance of 61 meters and 4 centimeters within 24 hours, a feat that was achieved using a Herrenknecht TBM. During 2021, the UK's largest TBM was delivered by Herrnknecht for the boring of the Silvertown Tunnel. Herrenknecht also produced the TBMs to bore multiple tunnels for Britain's High Speed 2 (HS2) railway line.
During 2023, Herrenknecht acquired a majority stake in the geothermal energy specialist H. Anger’s Söhne Bohr- und Brunnenbaugesellschaft mbH in order to expand the company’s portfolio of automated drilling rigs and equipment. The firm has also investigated the use of advanced control systems, guided by artificial intelligence, in order to minimise noise levels generated from geothermal energy schemes.
From Wikipedia’s article on Herrenknecht, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5