Weihua Cranes Set New Chinese Record in Ultra-Deep Shaft Engineering

Industry Spotlight · Heavy Lifting Technology | May 2026

How a purpose-built 700-meter intelligent hoisting system from Henan Weihua Group helped drill through 637 meters of China’s most challenging geology — and rewrote the rulebook for underground construction.

Metric	Figure
Record shaft depth	637 m
System design ceiling	700 m
Monthly advance record	278.28 m
Efficiency vs. traditional method	10×

When engineers at China’s Songyang Pumped-Storage Power Station in Zhejiang Province needed to drive two vertical shafts to a depth of 637 meters — equivalent to more than 200 floors of a skyscraper — they faced a problem that had no off-the-shelf answer. The geology was unforgiving: active fault zones, uncontrolled water ingress, limited ventilation, and an unrelenting volume of excavated rock that had to be hauled from impossible depths. The problem lies not only in engineering technology, but also in whether any crane system in China can handle this task.

The answer comes from Henan, China. Weihua Cranes (formerly Henan Weihua Group Co., Ltd.) designed and delivered what is now widely recognized as China’s first integrated intelligent lifting system with a rated depth of 700 meters, specifically tailored to overcome all the challenges on-site in Songyang.

A Project That Demanded More Than Existing Technology

The Songyang Pumped-Storage Power Station is a key component of China’s “14th Five-Year Plan” energy strategy, designed to store surplus renewable electricity and release it on demand. Two ultra-deep shafts form the hydraulic core of the system. Their successful completion — announced in May 2026 — marks a new national record for depth in the pumped-storage sector.

The challenges were formidable. Conventional vertical shaft construction relies on manual or semi-automated hoisting rigs that struggle above 400 meters. Beyond that threshold, payload dynamics, rope mechanics, sensor latency, and human reaction times combine to create safety and efficiency ceilings that simply cannot be overcome by incremental upgrades to conventional equipment.

“A monthly advance of 278.28 meters — nearly ten times the industry baseline — was achieved not through brute force, but through intelligence layered on precision mechanics.”

Weihua’s engineering team studied the Songyang site in detail before committing to a design. The result was a bespoke integrated hoist-and-transport system — a 700-meter-class intelligent shaft equipment platform — that fuses 5G connectivity, over one hundred embedded sensors, and real-time command infrastructure into a single operational ecosystem.

How the Weihua System Works

The system’s defining innovation is the shift from human-supervised to system-supervised operation underground. Sensor data from the shaft floor — load readings, rope tension, environmental gases, temperature profiles, position coordinates — streams continuously to a surface command center via a dedicated 5G network node installed at the shaft head. Operators never need to be in the shaft during active hoisting cycles.

Core capabilities of the Weihua 700m intelligent shaft system:

• 5G-linked real-time telemetry from 100+ shaft-floor sensors to surface command center
• “Zero underground personnel, full surface control” operational model during hoisting cycles
• Multi-mode adaptability: muck hoist, TBM in-shaft assembly and disassembly, precision pressure-pipe installation
• Monthly excavation advance of 278.28 meters — a new industry record
• Designed to a 700-meter ceiling, providing headroom beyond the 637-meter operational depth
• Seamless integration across the full excavation-to-lining workflow

The system’s versatility was equally important. During different phases of construction, the same platform handled rock muck hoist operations from the pressure-regulated chamber, in-shaft mechanical assembly and disassembly of the tunnel boring machine, and the high-precision placement of pressure steel pipe segments — tasks with radically different load geometries and positioning tolerances. That adaptability eliminated the need for multiple independent rigs and the transition time between them.

Why This Matters Beyond One Project

The Songyang breakthrough is significant not just as a milestone for Weihua or for China’s pumped-storage sector. It demonstrates that ultra-deep vertical construction — previously limited by the physics of conventional equipment — can be industrialized with the right intelligent systems architecture.

Pumped-storage capacity is growing rapidly across Asia, Europe, and North America as grid operators seek large-scale alternatives to balance solar and wind intermittency. Many of the most promising sites involve deep geology that conventional shaft construction cannot access economically. Weihua’s 700-meter platform changes that calculus, opening geological formations that were previously considered unviable.

Weihua Crane’s broader product portfolio spans overhead cranes, gantry cranes, port and terminal cranes, EOT cranes, special-application lifting systems, and electric hoists — serving industries from steel manufacturing and wind power to railway construction and marine logistics. The Songyang project sits at the specialized end of that spectrum, but the underlying competencies — custom engineering, intelligent control integration, and field-proven reliability — are consistent across the company’s entire range.

An Outlook Built on the Weihua Philosophy

Weihua operates under the principle of “Customer First, Value Creation.” In practice, that means the company does not offer catalog solutions for non-standard problems. The Songyang assignment illustrates what that philosophy looks like when the stakes are highest: a full-cycle engagement from site analysis through bespoke design, manufacturing, commissioning, and operational support.

With the Zhejiang shaft record now in place, Weihua has signaled its intention to continue pushing both depth and intelligence thresholds as China’s new-energy infrastructure buildout accelerates through the decade.

Henan Weihua Group Co., Ltd. is headquartered in Changyuan City, Henan Province, China, and serves clients across port logistics, renewable energy, steel manufacturing, marine, railway, and heavy industrial sectors worldwide. Learn more at henanweihua.com.