Herrenknecht AG is a German company that manufactures tunnel boring machines (TBMs). Headquartered in Allmannsweier, Schwanau, Baden-Württemberg, it is the worldwide market leader for heavy TBMs.
Established by Martin Herrenknecht in 1975, the company soon grew. Its first overseas subsidiary, Herrenknecht International Ltd, was created in 1984; a further 79 subsidiaries would be set up or purchased over the next 30 years to provide global coverage. Its products have often pushed technological boundaries; a Herrenknecht-built TBM in the late 1990s was the largest in the world at that time, while the world's longest and deepest railway tunnel (the Gotthard Base Tunnel) was bored using the company's apparatus. By 2015, the company had around 5,000 employees.
History
Martin Herrenknecht established the Martin Herrenknecht engineering company in 1975; it initially had six employees.[1] Two years later, it became Herrenknecht GmbH, at which point it had a capital of 20 million euros.[2] By 1984, Herrenknecht had opened Herrenknecht International Ltd. in Sunderland, England, its first foreign subsidiary.[3]