A consortium headed by Alpine Mayreder, FCC's Austrian subsidiary, has been awarded Austria's largest-ever public tender, to design, build, finance and operate (DBFO) Austria's first toll road concession for a period of 30 years.
The project represents an investment of approximately 933 million euro and will be financed privately in its entirety. Approximately 800 million euro will be provided by a number of banks, including 350 million euro from the European Investment Bank. Deutsche Bank advised on structuring the finance.
The project is a Y-shaped toll road 51 kilometres long; it includes building a first partial section of the A5 from Vienna towards the Czech Republic, between Eibesbrunn and Schrick, as well as extending Vienna's north-east ring road, off which the S1 and S2 high-speed roads will be built.
Construction will take three years and the road will have two lanes each way on the ring road and three lanes each way on the toll roads.
The project includes 14 junctions, 98 concrete structures, a tunnel measuring almost two kilometres in length, and two sections of cut-and-cover tunnel.
Alpine
The Alpine Group operates worldwide in construction and industrial services. With projected revenues of approximately 2.2 billion euro in 2006 and a total staff of 9,000, Alpine is Austria's second-largest construction company.
Civil engineering accounts for 47% of revenues, building for 35%, industrial services (Alpine Energy) for 9%, and the other 9% comes from other services. By markets, Austria and Germany together provide 73% of revenues, Eastern Europe provides 25%, and 2% is obtained on other continents.
In construction, Alpine is a leading specialist in underground work, including the new Saint Gotthard tunnel through the Alps (over 50 km. long) and the extension of Singapore Metro. Alpine also built the Allianz Arena in Munich, a site of the recent World Cup.
In the area of industrial services, Alpine Energy provides installation and maintenance services for transportation networks, substations, installations and civil work for energy and communications. It is particularly active in Central and Eastern Europe.
The company also operates quarries, aggregate plants and test laboratories, manages sports and recreations centres, and provides communications systems and overhead lines. It also maintains wastewater treatment plants and manages hospitals.
Founded in 1965, Alpine began to expand rapidly in the 1990s by acquiring companies such as Kapsreiter, Mayreder and Ferro-Betonit. In 2001, it acquired Universale to complete the Alpine Mayreder Bau group in its current configuration. These acquisitions were financed out of the company's cash flow.
In the last six years, the group's construction business has more than doubled in size.
In July 2006, FCC acquired 80.7% of the shares of Alpine Mayreder Bau as part of the strategic plan launched in April 2005 by FCC's main shareholder, Esther Koplowitz, which aims to double revenues and EBITDA within three years and attain 35% of total revenues from other countries.
