Vinci opens office in Turkey as part of global expansion

Europe’s largest contractor, Vinci, has stepped up its global expansion, opening an office in Turkey just five months after setting up a base in Canada, where the group is chasing
over £1.2bn worth of PFI hospital work.

The €34bn-turnover (£30bn) firm opened an office in Istanbul in Turkey, following an investment in $100m (£63.6m) groundworks engineering firm Zetas. The companies now has a total of 200 staff in Turkey. The group previously opened an office in Vancouver in April that now employs four people.

Vinci is already bidding on a PFI hospital project in British Columbia understood to be worth about £93m and is eyeing a future pipeline of up to 10 additional PFI health opportunities across the province.

John Stanion, chairman and chief executive of Vinci’s UK contracting arm, said: “We are looking at markets around the world that are seeing exponential growth. Turkey is one of them, where we have just invested in a groundworks company, and we have a base in Vancouver now to allow us to bid for a number of upcoming PFI hospitals. We have also opened offices in Oman, Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi.”

David Finch, managing director of Vinci Investments covering PFI in Canada, said: “In British Columbia there are pipeline plans to start a new hospital project every six to nine months over the next three years. Each one will be worth £310-370m, in some cases more. That’s a £1.2bn pipeline of possible hospital work and we are looking to get involved with as many of those projects as possible.”

The PFI market in Canada, known as P3, has been developed to kickstart infrastructure development across the country. The Canadian government is developing P3 opportunities through two initiatives, a £740m P3 Canada Fund that will support innovative projects and a £16m commitment over five years to establish a federal P3 office to facilitate broader use of P3s in Canadian infrastructure projects.