December 5 (SeeNews) - Greece's Avax has started building the southern access road to the Peljesac bridge in Croatia, local media reported.
Croatian road operator Hrvatske Ceste (HC) has brought in Avax to works on the 18 km long sections Sparagovici-Prapratno and Prapratno-Doli on Thursday, news wire SeeBiz.eu reported, quoting information from HC.
Avax has proposed to build the two sections that make up the southern access road to the bridge for 511 million kuna ($76 million/69 million euro) in 28 months.
In November, HC already brought in Austria's Strabag and its local partners to works on the 12 km long Duboka-Sparagovici road section, which represents the northern access road to the Peljesac bridge. Strabag has offered to build the Duboka-Sparagovici section for 487 million kuna in 33 months.
In October, Croatia signed the two deals worth some 990 million kuna in total, hiring Strabag and Avax for the construction of the Peljesac bridge's access roads.
The European Commission is providing 85% of the financing needed for building the access roads to the bridge, the Croatian government said earlier.
The construction of the Peljesac bridge started in July 2018 after HC signed a 2.08 billion kuna deal for the implementation of the project with a Chinese consortium led by CRBC. Croatia hopes to see construction works completed in January 2021.
The bridge will connect the peninsula of the same name with the rest of mainland Croatia over the Adriatic, providing an alternative route to crossing the Neum Corridor - a strip of the Adriatic coastline situated in Bosnia and Herzegovina between these two parts of Croatia.
The Peljesac bridge will be 55 m high and 2.4 km long, with four lanes.
(1 euro = 7.43882 kuna)