It is costing £260 million to make, will be more than six miles long and will not be completed until next year.

And one company in the West Midlands can say it has played a key role in the creation of the new Tyne Tunnel project in Newcastle.

Walsall-based construction support firm RMD Kwikform supplied the steel supports for the major project.

And bosses say that is just the start, promising more large-scale developments are in the pipeline at home and abroad.

The award-winning company, which employs about 100 people in Brickyard Road, Aldridge, made the huge steel and aluminium supports for the current work on the Tyne Tunnel, a new river underpass in Newcastle upon Tyne which links Wallsend and Jarrow.

It designed a unique ceiling mount support system to speed up the construction process for the new tunnel.
RMD Kwikform supplied special tubes for the concrete to be poured from the tunnel roof down to the walls and supplied screws to allow the beams to be fixed into place.

Chief engineer Ian Fryer said: “The engineering time we had to put into this project was amazing and it is a proud moment for all at RMD Kwikform that we can put our name to one of the UK’s most important infrastructure projects.”

It is just the latest in a long line of engineering feats for the company.

It has also provided roof propping for the £240m Aquatic Centre being built for the 2012 Olympic Games and been involved in a £1.5m restoration of grade II listed Southease bridge in Brighton and the ambitious £1.3bn expansion of Libya’s Tripoli airport and Yas Island complex in Abu Dhabi.

By Deborah Stewart