July 14 (SeeNews) - China Road and Bridge Corporation (CRBC) has completed 50% of the works on the construction of the 520 million euro ($593 million) Peljesac bridge in southern Croatia, local media reported.
The works carried out so far, some two years following the launch of the project, are estimated at 1.01 billion kuna ($153 million/134 million euro), news daily Vecernji List reported over the weekend, citing information from Croatian road operator Hrvatske Ceste (HC).
Construction works on seven of the bridge's 12 pillars have been completed and the construction of the pylons has commenced, according to the report.
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.
In May, prime minister Andrej Plenkovic said that due to the coronavirus pandemic, the completion of the bridge might be delayed by two or three months beyond its July 31, 2021 deadline.
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 metres high and 2.4 kilometres long, with four lanes.
In October 2019, Croatia signed two deals worth some 990 million kuna in total, hiring Austria's Strabag and Greece's Avax for the construction of the access roads to the bridge.
(1 euro = 7.52762 kuna)