“We are ready to resume work here in Romania. I see very positive signs in this country. Actually, the positive signs started to appear in the second half of 2014 and that was the moment when we started to mobilize our team,” Ludovic Duplan, regional director for Central Europe of Bouygues group told ZF.
“We have at least five very clear targets before June and we think we will resume work in Romania in the first half of this year.”
Duplan says chances are high to secure a project in the utilities sector, without specifying what project exactly. The company’s targets are in the office building area, shopping malls but also logistic, mainly in Bucharest.
Bouygues arrived in Romania in 1994 and has since built a series of projects such as Novotel and Pullman hotels in Bucharest, Bucharest Financial Plaza office building, Stejarii residential complex and CEFIN logistic park (now Europolis Park Bucharest) next to the Bucharest-Pitesti highway.
When the crisis started the company decided to put the local business on stand-by and keep a team of 20 employees to provide after-sales services for the projects already completed.
It is also planning to buy a Romanian medium-sized construction company in the next three years and has set aside tens of millions of euros to do it.
“We want to be competitive on the long term and we want to remain in Romania on the long term. To catch up with the market, the best option is to buy a competitor, because it brings value but also access to local resources,” Duplan says, adding talks with a few companies have already started.
The French group applied the same business model in Poland, where it bought a small local company. Its operations in that country currently generate EUR120 million revenue a year employing 300 people.
Bouygues’ target for 2015 is to reach revenue of EUR20 million in Romania and about EUR50 million to EUR60 million in the next three years. The local subsidiary expects the number of employees to reach 100 by yearend. Some of the new employees will be Romanians that Bouygues relocated to other projects abroad after the onset of the crisis, especially to France, Ludovic Duplan said.
Bouygues official says that the local construction market, which experienced a 40% to 50% decline during the crisis has the opportunity to bounce back mainly because of EU funds made available to Romania.
“We were not expecting the crisis to last so long, but we think that in two, three, four years, the construction market in Romania will be booming again. 1% of the GDP growth per year in countries like Czech Republic and Poland was generated by European funds. It’s a unique chance. Absorption was not so good between 2007 and 2013 but Romania has to do better for the 2014-2020 financial framework.”
Bouygues Construction is part of Bouygues group, which also includes Bouygues Telecom (telecommunications), TF1 (TV station), Colas (road construction) and Bouygues Immobilier (real estate).
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)