July 29 (SeeNews) - Croatia's state-owned motorway operator Hrvatske Ceste (HC) has selected Greece's Avax and Austria's Strabag to build access roads to the future Peljesac bridge, local media reported.
HC has decided to award the construction of two road sections - Sparagovici-Prapratno and Prapratno-Doli, to Avax who offered to do the works at a price of 511.5 million kuna ($77 million/69 million euro), private TV channel N1 reported on Friday.
In a separate tender procedure, HC awarded the construction of the Duboka-Sparagovici section to Strabag who offered to do the job for 487.3 million kuna.
The sections Sparagovici-Prapratno and Prapratno-Doli make up the 18-km long southern access road to the bridge. Their construction is estimated to cost 449.1 million kuna without VAT.
The only other bidder in the tender for these two subsections was Strabag who offered to build them for 569.3 million kuna. Yet, HC selected Avax's offer as more favourable.
The value of the 12-km long Duboka-Sparagovici section was estimated at 482 million kuna without VAT.
The construction of the Peljesac bridge started in July 2018 after HC signed in April a 2.08 billion kuna deal for 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 = 7.38408 kuna)