ZHENGZHOU -- China Railway Engineering Equipment Group Co., Ltd. (CREG) said it had produced the world's largest rectangular shield tunneling machine.

The shield tunneling machine, which rolled off the production line Friday at the corporation's Shanghai plant, is 14.82 meters in width and 9.446 meters in height. It will be used to carry out tunneling in an expressway project in the city of Jiaxing, East China's Zhejiang Province, according to a source of the CREG, which is based in Zhengzhou, Henan Province.

It marks a breakthrough for China in the technology to design and manufacture shield tunneling machinery through solving a series of technical roadblocks in the process of design and manufacturing.

CREG has taken the largest market share in China since 2012, and topped the world in 2017 and 2018 in terms of shield tunneling machine production and sales volume.

The corporation has exported its products to 20 countries and regions including Italy, Denmark, Singapore, Australia and Algeria.