The conveyors will move more than five million tonnes of spoil and remove the need for one million lorry movements from roads in west London.

HS2’s contractors Balfour Beatty Vinci Systra joint venture (BBVS JV) and Skanska Costain Strabag joint venture (SCS JV), have collaborated to construct the network of conveyors which meet at the HS2 Logistics Hub at Willesden Euro Terminal.

The conveyor network has three spurs, serving the Old Oak Common station site, the Victoria Road Crossover box site and the Atlas Road site. At Old Oak Common, HS2 Ltd’s station contractor, BBVS JV will use the conveyor to remove the 1.5 million tonnes of spoil that is being excavated for the station box, the subsurface structure in which the  HS2 platforms will be constructed.

The spur which serves Victoria Road Crossover Box site will be used by SCS JV and will transport spoil excavated for the crossover box. In addition, the spoil excavated in the construction of the Northolt Tunnel East when two TBMs are launched from the site in late 2023 will also be transported to the Logistics Hub via the conveyor.

The final spur runs from a site on Atlas Road and will be used to remove spoil from the excavation of a logistics tunnel running from Atlas Road to Old Oak Common. The conveyor will then be extended through the logistics tunnel and will remove material from excavation of the Euston tunnel.

From Old Oak Common, the conveyor runs at 2.1 metres per second, and the journey to the logistics hub takes 17.5 minutes.

From the Logistics hub, the spoil is taken by rail to three destinations across the UK – Barrington in Cambridgeshire, Cliffe in Kent, and Rugby in Warwickshire – where it will be reused providing landfill for new developments.

To date, the Logistics Hub has processed more than 430,000 tonnes of spoil, with more than 300 trains distributing the spoil to its end destination.

The start button on the conveyor system was pressed by rail minister Huw Merriman, who said: “It was a pleasure to launch this truly remarkable conveyor system at Old Oak Common today and see how impressive it is in action, as it brings us one step closer to our goal of delivering a cleaner transport network.

“These conveyors are just one way in which HS2 is transforming the future of construction, by keeping the impact on the environment and local community to a minimum while driving growth across the country.”

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