ITC SA was formed in 1971 by a civil engineer as a consulting company with the scope to design and trade with special equipment for tunnel construction. During the first 10 years, it mainly equipped international large job sites world wide with the necessary ‘custom built’ rolling stock. In the late seventies, ITC introduced an ‘invert cleaning’ machine for narrow tunnels. This machine very quickly became an efficient mucking machine and an excavation machine, so called Tunnel-Heading and Loading Machine.
The development was carried out in three machine sizes: 15 tons, 30 tons and 40 tons. Each machine size was developed with different booms and different tools according to customer’s specification in terms of tunnel size, geological conditions and heading system
After 15 years co-operation with the Schaeff Company, ITC entered into a partnership agreement in order to expand their activity and equipment range. Schaeff is manufacturing Wheel and Crawler Loader, Backhoes and Walking Excavators and different special equipment for civil construction and the world leading Fuchs scrap handling machine. All together they produce more than 3,000 units a year. Recently, Webster, the British Road Header manufacturer for coalmine also joined the Group
The tunneling equipment is built in the department called ‘Construction, Mining and Technology’. The Schaeff group comprises 10 group companies and has half a dozen manufacturing facilities in Europe employing approximately 1,500 highly qualified people.
Today, besides the Tunnel Heading and Loading Machines, ITC product range covers the following equipments:-
- Tunnel Excavators
- Shaft Excavators
- Road heading Machines
- Shaft Sinking Excavators
- Excavators and Wheel Loaders for underground operation
- Hydraulic Cutting Units
- Shaft Sinkers
- Special Machines for Underground and Mining Applications.
The latest development was the transfer of the ownership of Schaeff to the American Company Terex. This brought the new name of Schaeff-Terex. Since 1980, more than 250 units were successfully worked in more than 500 tunnel job sites on the 5 continents including few machines working in India for construction of Tunnels. |
