Finance & Funding

The European Commission has given the go-ahead for an acquisition of Spanish highway firm Abertis by German construction company Hochtief. Hochtief is itself a subsidiary of Spanish construction firm ACS but the EC ruling says that there are no competition issues in the markets affected by the deal. Spain’s highway concession market is covered by a regulatory system to minimise the risk of any one company reaching a position that is too dominant. With the EC ruling having been given on the deal, Spain’s

A new private network platform has been developed that I designed to make it easier to sell construction equipment worldwide. Called Krank, this online company-to-company network is designed for trading large items of capital equipment, both regionally and internationally. This trading system allows companies to create private networks between each other and trade large items such as cranes, wheeled loaders, trucks or excavators. The site acts as a private sale room with users able to customise their

A loan worth US$250 million will be help pay for road development work in parts of India. The loan is being provided by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in a deal agreed with the Indian Government. This funding will be used for road projects in five of India’s states. The work will focus on boosting connectivity and safety, particularly for rural areas. In all some 12,000km of roads will be improved with the programme. Another $250 million loan will also be provided by the ADB with this package intended to

Spanish contractor Grupo Rubau has won a €120 million deal for construction of a 19.4km section of the S-61 motorway in Poland. Work on the stretch connecting Ostrow Mazowiecka and Szczuczyn will be finished in 31 months.

Construction work for the Vinogradovo-Boltino-Tarasovka toll road in the Moscow region is now underway. The work is being carried out by Vis Group, a subsidiary of Gazprom. The 16km link will join the A104 and M8 highways, with the work costing US$488 million. This will be the first PPP project carried out in the Moscow region.

The French earthmoving equipment market remains the third biggest market in Europe with sales of 21,630 machines last year. According to Cisma, the French equipment manufacturers’ association, 2017 stands out as the best year since the market crash in 2008. Growth in equipment sales for 2017 so far have been driven by crawler excavators, which were 22% higher than in 2016. This includes mini excavator sales, which are the most popular product, and reflect a strong house building market this year The mini

The US is in desperate need of rebuilding many of its road bridges. This comes from an analysis of official data carried out by the American Road and Transportation Builders Association (ARTBA). According to ARTBA’s analysis of the US Department of Transportation’s just released 2017 National Bridge Inventory database, 54,259 of the nation’s 612,677 bridges are rated structurally deficient. The work is needed as these transport links are vital, with Americans crossing these deficient bridges 174 million

Nicaragua’s Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure (MTI) is setting out its road development programme for 2018. In all the plans call for the construction of 171km of roads. Work will be completed for the road from Mulukuku to Siuna, with the first 23km stretch due to open in September 2018 and the remaining 21.5km expected in December 2018. Meanwhile the road from Nueva Guinea to San Francisco should be complete by November 2018. Work started on these two routes in 2016. The project also calls for

Myanmar’s Ministry of Construction in Myanmar has set a budget for road and bridge improvement works for the April 2018-September 2018 period. US$181.5 million will be spent improving transport infrastructure in this period. Five road upgrade projects and 41 bridge improvement works are being planned. So far improvements are being carried out to three road links and 17 bridges.