Construction of German autobahn bridge will use domestic steel

The construction of a new bridge crossing the Rhine river at Duisburg has been awarded, with the proviso that the steel for the project will be sourced in Germany.

The planning of the bridge for the A 40 autobahn crossing the Rhine at Neuenkamp has been linked with a dispute over a bridge further south from Cologne to Leverkusen. A discussion arose when two years ago it became public that the construction company awarded, Austria’s Porr, would source the steel segments from China, rather than from more local suppliers.

Only some weeks ago, that issue returned to prominence when inspectors dismissed the fabrication of the delivered segments – and not the actual steel material – as being inadequate. The contract then was withdrawn from Porr, and is being newly-tendered.

For the Duisburg bridge, the building consortium consists of Hochtief Infrastructure GmbH, MCE AT, MCE HU, MCE CZ, Zwickauer Sonderstahlbau GmbH, and Plauen Stahl Technologie GmbH. The 33,000 tonnes of steel for the bridge will be sourced in Germany, to be fabricated in Germany, Hungary and the Czech Republic, according to the official announcement seen by Kallanish.

According to the announcement, it will be Germany’s largest cable-stayed bridge, planned to be completed in late 2026, at a cost of €500 million ($548m). It will replace an existing bridge built at the site in 1970 for a traffic load of 30,000 vehicles/day, rather than the 100,000 crossing it today.