Infrastructure projects to make up major part of Alpine’s 2009 turnover

The project delivers a total area of 100,000 sqm in five building and a 1,000-space car park. Alpine Romania has also been involved in retail and logistic projects for clients like Billa, Kaufland and Praktiker, office complex Iride Business Park, Egger's plant in Radauti and infrastructure projects such as the widening of the DN1 highway to six lanes.
The firm's overall local construction projects reach some EUR 250 million. By the end of 2008, it had delivered turnkey projects worth EUR 400 million since setting up on the Romanian market. Of its entire portfolio, Alpine's infrastructure projects made up 40 percent, the same portion as industrial and civil works. In 2009, Alpine plans to increase its involvement in infrastructure projects, after investing over EUR 20 million in construction equipment. “Infrastructure projects could become a majority in the firm's overall turnover and reach up to 70 percent of all the works in 2009,” MD Ionel Giuglea told Business Review.
Before returning to Alpine, which Giuglea managed between 2000 and 2007, the businessman was MD of the local real estate division of Austrian group Raiffeisen Evolution (RE) for a year and a half. During that time he was involved in the EUR 250 million mixed project Floreasca City in Bucharest and in acquiring the EUR 90 million plot from Petrom. “I felt like I needed to learn something new and wanted to understand the business system from the investor's point of view after 21 years in construction,” explained Giuglea. When he left RE, Floreasca City had obtained construction permits and was finalizing the design details and construction contracts. Of the local real estate market, Giuglea told BR: “I think the expectations of achieving gains on the local market have been exaggerated, on top of a pretty unhealthy pressure on bank loans to sustain real estate projects.”
Magda Purice