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Vienna, 09. March 2007 – STRABAG SE – one of the leading European construction companies – received an award yesterday, Thursday, in London during the „8th Annual Euromoney Project Finance Awards“ for the „European PPP Deal of the Year 2006“. STRABAG and associated companies of the „DirectRoute“-consortium received this award for their street and tunnel project in the city of Limerick, located on the west coast of Ireland.
The project included construction of a 10-km section of Highway M7 from Rossbrien to Cratloe Castle. A major part of this project is the construction of the descending tunnel „River Shannon“ (Ireland’s largest river), 675m long. This is a feat of Austrian engineering. Three fly-overs and eight underpasses will also be constructed in the course of this project. The street will connect the N20 Cork/Tralee Road with the N18 Ennis Road, thus becoming the second section of the Limerick by-pass. Construction on the second-ever river tunnel in Ireland has been in progress since mid-2006.
Total project cost amounts to EUR 361 mil. STRABAG has a 20% share in the grant and 40% share in construction volume. Construction should be finished by autumn 2010. The grant lasts 35 years and will expire in 2041. This is STRABAG’s second major project in Ireland after the start of the PPP-highway project in Fermoy in October. Preparations are underway for two other major tenders in Ireland, in which STRABAG will also take part. The infrastructure market in Ireland is one of the most fascinating in Europe. The national infrastructure development plan foresees investment of EUR 35 bil. in the infrastructure of the island over the next 10 years.
This was an outstanding deal on a number of different levels. Apart from the innovative financing via an assetbacked commercial paper conduit structure, it was the first rated transaction in the Irish PPP market and the first monoline-guaranteed PPP in Ireland. The DirectRoute consortium closed the deal with two banks, a Luxembourgbased infrastructure fund, European Investment Bank (EIB) and a monoline. The consortium includes: Strabag, John Sisk, Lagan Holdings and Roadbridge.
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STRABAG SE is one of the leading European construction enterprises. With approx. 53,000 staff and employees, earnings in 2006 totaled over EUR 10 bil. From the core markets in Austria and Germany, STRABAG is active via numerous subsidiaries in all Eastern and South-East European countries, selected markets in Western Europe, the Arabian peninsula as well as Canada, Chile and India. STRABAG covers the entire range of construction services (building construction and civil engineering, road construction, tunnel construction & services) as well as the entire construction value chain. For information, see www.strabag.com
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