Hong Kong record

With the supply of structural bearings for Hong Kong’s new Kai Tak Sports Park, mageba is extending its long track record of manufacturing bearings and expansion joints for the buildings and bridges that make up the city’s impressive event and transportation infrastructure.

The Kai Tak Sports Park is currently being constructed in the Hong Kong suburb of Kowloon, on the site of the city’s former Kai Tak Airport. The park includes a main stadium with a fixed seating capacity of 50,000 and a retractable roof, and an indoor sports centre with a seating capacity of up to 10,000. To facilitate the construction, mageba has recently supplied 140 large structural bearings – 88 LASTO®BLOCK elastomeric bearings designed for loads of up to 25,600 kN, and 52 RESTON®POT bearings designed for loads of up to 25,500 kN.

Long track record in Hong Kong

This is just the latest in a long line of major infrastructure projects in Hong Kong for which mageba has supplied key structural components over the last three decades. In fact, it is already the second such project on the site of the city’s old Kai Tak Airport – in 2012, we manufactured the 1000+ LASTO®BLOCK elastomeric bearings needed for the construction of the Kai Tak Cruise Terminal there.

Like the Kai Tak Sports Park, the Hong Kong Conference and Exhibition Centre is another of the city’s most important event venues whose structure depends heavily on the RESTON®POT bearings that are critical to its design. In this case, the twelve bearings that were installed in 2007 to support the six 100m-long trusses which carry the exhibition floors are extraordinarily large, having been designed to each support a load of 206,000 kN – roughly twice the total weight of the Eiffel Tower.

While the RESTON®POT bearings supplied in 2015 for the West Kowloon Railway Terminus are not nearly as large, they are special in their own way, having been equipped in some cases with load monitoring and height-adjustment capabilities.

But it is on the city’s bridges that mageba first started gaining a reputation in Hong Kong as a reliable manufacturer of exceptional structural components. In 1997, the newly built Ting Kau Bridge – one of the longest cable-stayed bridges in the world – was equipped with 16-gap TENSA®MODULAR expansion joints.

And a year earlier, in 1996, even larger joints of the same type were installed in the new Tsing Ma Bridge – another bridge that provides access to the city’s new Chep Lak Kok Airport, which was constructed to replace the old Kai Tak Airport. In fact, with 25 gaps each, the TENSA®MODULAR expansion joints supplied by mageba for the Tsing Ma Bridge were the largest  modular joints in the world until the 27-gap joints of the Run Yang Bridge over the Yangtze River in China were supplied in 2002 – also by mageba.

With a decades-long track record like this in Hong Kong, covering bearings and expansion joints for various exceptional bridges and buildings, we look forward to competing for the contract to supply these products for the city’s next major infrastructure project – even if there is no sporting connection next time!

Sports park designer: POPULOUS
Contractor: Hip Hing Engineering
Owner: KTSPL (Kai Tak Sports Park Ltd)

The Kai Tak Sports Park, currently being constructed in Hong Kong on the site of the city’s former Kai Tak Airport, includes a main stadium with a fixed seating capacity of 50,000 and a retractable roof

The 140 bearings supplied for the Kai Tak Sports Park were manufactured at mageba’s Shanghai factory – including the 52 RESTON® POT bearings (parts shown here) which were designed for loads of up to 25,500 kN

The 88 LASTO®BLOCK elastomeric bearings also supplied for the Kai Tak Sports Park were designed for loads of up to 25,600 kN

The Kai Tak Cruise Terminal, also built on the site of the former Kai Tak Airport in Hong Kong, has a roof that spans over 70 m and a total of 1060 LASTO®BLOCK elastomeric bearings were used in the terminal’s construction (2012)

The Hong Kong Conference and Exhibition Centre was built with twelve extraordinarily large RESTON®POT bearings supporting the six 100m-long trusses that carry the exhibition floors (2007)

Each of the twelve huge RESTON®POT bearings manufactured for the Hong Kong Conference and Exhibition Centre was designed to support a load of 206,000 kN (2007)

Hong Kong’s West Kowloon Railway Terminus, equipped with RESTON®POT bearings featuring load monitoring and height-adjustment capabilities (2015)

Hong Kong’s Ting Kau Bridge, one of the longest cable-stayed bridges in the world, was constructed with 16-gap TENSA®MODULAR expansion joints facilitating its deck movements (1997)

Hong Kong’s Tsing Ma Bridge was built with 25-gap TENSA® MODULAR expansion joints – the largest modular joints in the world at the time (1996)