Warsaw, 17 August 2015 – PRESS BRIEFING - “Know your market, know your customers”: renowned construction company PORR has been using this approach to realise its intelligent growth strategy for the past five years, achieving international success. PORR has been active in Poland since 1987 and its local subsidiary PORR Polska S.A. is one of the country’s leading experts in building construction and railway engineering. Therefore it’s hardly surprising that PORR expressed an interest when Bilfinger Infrastructure S.A. was put up for sale.
“Bilfinger Infrastructure S.A. enjoys an exceptional reputation on the Polish and Norwegian infrastructure market and is well-positioned in both countries. The takeover represents an im-portant milestone for PORR on our third-largest home market. In future PORR Polska Construction S.A. and PORR Polska Infrastructure S.A. will sustainably consolidate PORR’s market position as a full service provider as two independent local companies which complement each other perfectly”, said Karl-Heinz Strauss, PORR CEO, on the successful conclusion of the purchase on 14 August 2015.
The purchase price for Bilfinger Infrastructure S.A. – which generated production output of EUR 166m in 2014 with around 800 employees – was EUR 21.5m.
Two strong local players form foundation for further growth PORR Polska Infrastructure, with its subsidiary in Norway, will be responsible for the business areas road and bridge construction, civil engineering, and energy construction in Poland and Norway. The team boasts around 700 employees in Poland and almost 100 in Norway, who all embody maximum expertise in engineering and service quality. Particularly in road and power plant construction, as well as hydraulic and civil engineering and bridge construction, the company has garnered international acclaim for its technological expertise and setting new global standards as a technological leader. The most spectacular infrastructure projects of PORR Polska Infrastructure include the Southern Bypass of Gdansk S7, the Rzeszów Bridge and the railway line to Chopin Airport.
“The entire management of PORR Polska Infrastructure and our team are pleased that after a year of uncertainty we now know where our journey will lead us. Right from the takeover nego-tiations we felt PORR’s appreciation for our achievements and for our team. The PORR Group Executive Board and our board members see great potential for growing our company. To-gether we have set the goal of increasing our production output to well over EUR 200m in the medium term. I am confident that we will achieve this target as part of the PORR Group”, said Piotr Kledzik, CEO of PORR Polska Infrastructure, expressing optimism on the future.
With an order backlog of EUR 162m as of 1 January 2015 and a current order pipeline of around EUR 180m, there are strong grounds for optimism. Furthermore, PORR Polska Infrastructure sees interesting growth opportunities in the coming years initiated by EU-funded projects in large-scale infrastructure.
PORR Polska Construction, which currently employs about 500 staff, will continue to focus on its well-established fields of building construction and railway engineering projects in Poland. With a market presence stretching back over 25 years, the company has made a key contribu-tion to Warsaw’s skyline through its building construction projects. One of the most striking PORR buildings in Warsaw is the Intercontinental Hotel, right beside the Palace of Culture and the Warsaw Financial Centre, which was also built by PORR. PORR Polska Construction recently succeeded yet again with its expertise in railway construction, winning three tenders to modernise parts of the 272, 273 and 131 lines.
“One of the declared goals of our growth strategy was to expand our market presence in Po-land. It was also clear from the start: we will only make a move when an attractive opportunity presents itself. The chance to take over Bilfinger Infrastructure S.A. was precisely this window of opportunity. We are now not only represented by a top infrastructure expert in Poland, but also in Norway – a market which holds exceptional appeal for infrastructure and in which we started to prepare for market entry some time ago. The three ongoing bridge construction projects Tresfjord, Harpe Bru and Farrisbrua have facilitated a PORR presence through three large-scale initiatives and this will certainly make it much easier for us to cultivate this market in the future”, said Hans Wenkenbach, PORR COO on the takeover’s role in PORR’s interna-tional market presence.
When one plus one equals three “It is not just PORR which will benefit from this new constellation in Poland and Norway; our customers will reap the greatest benefits. With more than 146 years’ experience, PORR is a pioneer of the modern construction industry. PORRians in every country are able to build on this expertise. Exchanging knowhow across the Group is one of our key success factors and offers direct value added for our customers. Furthermore, our clients appreciate our “one-stop-shop” concept, as we are able to stick to budgets and offer predictable value. This makes it clear that with the takeover of Bilfinger Infrastructure S.A. the whole is more than the sum of its parts and the equation “1+1=3” actually applies”, said CEO Strauss, summing up the deal.
About PORR AG Founded in 1869 and listed on the Vienna Stock Exchange ever since, PORR is the largest construction company in Austria and one of the leaders in Europe. As a full service provider, the company covers every aspect of the modern construction industry in building construction, civil engineering, infrastructure construction and environmental engineering: from planning, financing and construction through to operations. PORR realises projects of every size – from residential construction right through to complex infrastructure projects. In geographic terms PORR focuses its activities on Central, South-Eastern and Eastern Europe, as well as selected international markets such as Qatar. The home markets are Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Poland and the Czech Republic. With almost 13,000 staff, PORR generated production reve-nue of around EUR 3.5bn in 2014.
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