Construction of Suburban Rail Loop (SRL) East is delivering jobs in regional Victoria, with the LS Precast facility in Benalla to supply concrete segments for the SRL East twin tunnels – giving certainty to more than 75 workers and creating additional supply chain jobs.
The factory is Victoria’s largest precast concrete manufacturing facility and will make 96,700 concrete segments for the southern section of SRL East’s twin tunnels between Cheltenham and Glen Waverley.
Production of the segments for SRL East will begin in October – ready for tunnelling to start next year – and will continue until mid-2028. During this time, more than 170 segments will be made every day.
The facility was built in 2018 and has already supplied 49,000 concrete products for the West Gate Tunnel Project and is currently manufacturing more than 46,000 concrete segments for the North East Link Project.
Construction of SRL East from Cheltenham to Box Hill is delivering economic benefits across Victoria and Melbourne, with more than 3000 people working on the project, and many dozens of suppliers and sub-contractors from across the state involved in building the city-shaping project.
SRL will open up access to Melbourne’s suburbs for all regional Victorians, with transport super hubs at Clayton, Broadmeadows and Sunshine meaning they won’t have to travel through the CBD to get where they need to go:
- A Traralgon local can use SRL to get to a medical appointment in Box Hill in just 2 hours – saving 31 minutes on current public transport journeys.
- A student from Sunbury can get to Deakin Uni using SRL in 72 minutes, saving 9 minutes, and a lecturer living in Ballarat can get to campus in 132 minutes, saving 5 minutes.
- A worker from Bendigo can get to a meeting at Monash using SRL in 165 minutes, saving 6 minutes
- A student from Geelong can get there in 104 minutes, saving 7 minutes.
Major construction of SRL East is now underway, with the first tunnel boring machines starting to arrive on site later this year, ahead of the start of tunnelling in 2026.
Trains will be taking passengers in 2035, not only delivering faster, more reliable travel for Victorians, but also thousands more homes where they’re needed – next door to jobs, services and world-class public transport.