Sisk wins lucrative projects in Britain

BUILDING AND civil engineering group Sisk is beginning work on about €300 million worth of projects in Britain, including an athletes’ village for the 2012 Olympic Games.

The company has been focusing its efforts on seeking work outside Ireland since the domestic construction industry began to collapse three years ago.

It has won projects in the Middle East, central and eastern Europe and Britain, where it has a long-term presence.

Sisk confirmed yesterday that it has won contracts worth a total of €300 million in Britain over the last nine months.

The contracts include building the athletes’ village in the Olympic Games complex in east London. That project is valued at £78 million sterling.

Elsewhere, the Irish company is building two power plants, a gas-fired electricity plant in Pembrokeshire in Wales, and part of a waste-to-energy facility in Runcorn in northern England, which will be part of an overall waste project.

Projects also include hotels, in Wembley, Manchester and in Glasgow, where the Irish firm will use a system that allows the individual rooms to be built on an assembly line in a factory and then put in position by crane.

The other projects that it has won include commercial buildings such as a bakery and infrastructure developments.

Sisk’s profits fell by more than 50 per cent last year to €10 million. Its turnover was €1 billion, and the company estimates that about €1 in every €4 of those revenues now comes from overseas projects.

Earlier in the decade it began expanding into the medical supplies and distribution businesses in an effort to diversify.

The company is one of the biggest in its sector here. It was involved in a series of high-profile developments in this country, including the building of the Aviva Stadium at Lansdowne Road, and the Grand Canal Theatre in Dublin.