Rowa – Tunnelling Equipment Innovations

Rowa Tunnelling Logistics traditionally holds a Customer Day inviting partners, clients and interested parties to inform them at length about latest developments.  The company’s experience in tunnelling as well as plant construction assures optimal harmony between executing construction and mechanisation. Consistent focussing on mechanised installations for tunnelling is to be actively redeveloped. Towards this end although innovative measures will continue to be deployed in tunnelling, sectors of surface engineering will be increasingly tackled in future as well.
The aspired targets were explained at the Rowa Customer Day at the end of September 2009 and shored up by presenting examples of installations built throughout the world. In this connection Alberto Belloli presented himself as the new CEO and co-owner. The qualified mechanical engineer completed his studies at the ETH Zurich in 2001, where he held an assistant’s post before switching to the EMPA research institute in 2006. Belloli has been on the staff at Rowa for more than 11/2 year apart from being engaged as head of research and development in the family business Belloli SA (tunnelling equip-
ment, transport and construction site vehicles, mobile concrete mixers, dumpers and rapid-change systems) in Grono.
During the last 10 years a substantial differentiation of the programme has taken place in the field of conveying and disposal technology. As examples of this Belloli referred to vertical conveying through supply and disposal shafts or foil laying machines. Examples outside of tunnelling are plants for the Kölliken special waste repository and the supply and disposal logistics for the east-west railway axis running under the City of Zurich. Mining represents a further field with enormous potential, where the economic exploitation of new raw material deposits at ever greater depths places even higher demands on technology and performance than in the past. According to Belloli, Rowa has a great deal to offer on this sector in particular. As a consequence, know-how must be provided to ensure that productivity is increased at construction sites on the surface as well. An example here is the study “Converting Ballast Track to permanent Slab Track”. The efficient and economic renewal of existing and extremely busy main lines can only be achieved through well conceived supply and disposal logistics.
In the process ever greater performance and productivity represent the keys for guaranteeing a “return on investment” for the customer. At the same time safety is enhanced thanks to rational processes and more humane conditions created at the workplace.
CM