Sydney expected thousands of visitors from all over the world on the occasion of the 2000 Olympic Games. This is why a new 10-kilometer-long metro tunnel was constructed from downtown Sydney to the airport. The entire tunnel route almost exclusively runs through aquifer layers and very heterogeneous geological formations: homogeneous sections consisting of clay or rock; heterogeneous sections consisting of dune sand and clay or clay and rock; “bipartite” sections consisting of rock in the lower part and aquifer layers in the upper part.

The Herrenknecht Mixshield was designed specifically for this challenge - among other features for the first time with a rotary crusher that could break larger rocks so that they would not block the slurry lines. The tunnelling crew and the TBM mastered the challenges and the new metro could be put into operation right in time for the 2000 Olympic Games.