Finance & Funding

Chinese contractor China Roads and Bridges Company (CRBC) is spending €194 million to construct a key stretch of Montenegro’s Bar-Boljare highway during 2017. The Exim Bank in China is providing a loan facility worth €889.3 million to Montenegro’s Government to pay for the project. The loan is being provided over a 20-year period. This key stretch of the Bar-Boljare highway is 40km long and presents many technical challenges as it is one of the most complex sections of the route. This stretch will include 1

Brokk is boosting its range of demolition equipment with the purchase of fellow Scandinavian firm Aquajet. Brokk is a leading manufacturer of remote-controlled demolition machines and its recent acquisition of Aquajet Systems will widen its range of products available. Aquajet is a leading manufacturer of hydrodemolition robots.

The Construction Equipment Association (CEA) reports improvements in UK exports and imports of components and parts for construction and earthmoving machines. According to the CEA report, exports of components and parts showed modest improvements in the fourth quarter of 2016 compared with the third quarter,. This shows a 1.5% increase in weight (tonnes) terms, and an 11.3% increase in value terms.

Funding has been sourced to pay for widening work on Italy’s important A4 Autostrade. The section from Venice to Trieste will benefit from a finance package worth €600 million from the European Investment Bank (EIB) and the Italian bank Cassa Depositi e Prestiti (CDP). The funding will be supplied to Autovie Venete, the Italian motorway concession firm. This will pay for the construction of third lanes for the highway in either direction, helping boost capacity. The route has been identified as being strate

Nepal’s Kathmandu-Tarai highway now looks likely to be built under an engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract. This is a revision from the build-own-operate-transfer (BOOT) model previously suggested. Nepal's Ministry of Physical Infrastructure and Transport has announced the change for the project, which had an estimated cost of US$1.04 billion when put forward in 2015. The detailed project report (DPR) for the highway is likely to be set out by consortium, from India. The Nepalese Governm

Approval has been given for the construction of a new road tunnel in the German town of Starnberg. The €162 million road tunnel project is intended to cut congestion in the town centre but has been the subject of some controversy. The German Federal Government has agreed to a portion of the project’s costs, with the remainder coming from the Bavarian State as well as the local government. Starnberg, located some 30km south west of Bavaria’s capital Munich, is reputed to be the wealthiest town in Germany, so

Revisions to a bypass project in Slovakia will help reduce the construction costs. The Prešov bypass is now being built with just two lanes, which will cut the construction costs by some€200 million. The project was initially expected to cost as much as €900 million and was criticised for its expense. Further plans for a tunnel at the northern end of the bypass are being discussed at present. Meanwhile revisions to the traffic system in Prešov are expected to bring further savings to the construction projec