SK Construction Wins 'PFI Awards' for Global Finance Two Years in a Row

▲ A bird's-eye view of the Silvertown Tunnel project in London, UK. (Provided by SK Engineering & Construction)

[Asia Economy Reporter Chunhee Lee] SK Engineering & Construction's European infrastructure project has won a global finance award for the second consecutive year.

SK Engineering & Construction announced on the 7th that its Silver Town Tunnel project in the UK was selected as the "Europe Transport Deal of the Year" at the '2019 PFI (Project Finance International) Awards' held in London, UK on the 5th.

The PFI Awards, hosted by the global finance magazine PFI, is one of the most prestigious events in the global industry. Last year, the world's longest suspension bridge project, the Turkey Canakkale project, in which SK Engineering & Construction and Daelim Industrial participated as a consortium, was selected as the "Turkish Deal of the Year" at this ceremony.

The UK Silver Town Tunnel project is a project to construct two new one-way two-lane road tunnels with a total length of 1.4 km passing under the River Thames, connecting the Silver Town and Greenwich areas in London. With this project, SK Engineering & Construction became the first Korean construction company to participate in a Public Private Partnership (PPP) infrastructure project in Western Europe. The project is being carried out under a BOT (Build-Operate-Transfer) scheme, where the tunnel will be operated for 25 years after completion and then transferred to the London city government. SK Engineering & Construction formed an investment consortium called 'RiverLinx' with four overseas companies to participate in the project. The project cost is approximately 1 billion pounds (KRW 1.536 trillion).

▲ The Silvertown Tunnel project in the UK, in which SK Engineering & Construction is participating as part of a consortium, has been selected as the 'European Transport Project of the Year' by PFI. Participants are taking a commemorative photo at the awards ceremony. (Photo by SK Engineering & Construction)

The SK consortium raised the 1 billion pounds project cost through project financing (PF) in November last year. A total of 14 leading domestic and international financial institutions participated as lenders, including the Export-Import Bank of Korea, Korea Trade Insurance Corporation, KDB Industrial Bank, Hana Bank, Woori Bank, Samsung Life Insurance, Germany's KfW Development Bank, and UK's Aviva Insurance.

Jae-Hyun Ahn, President of SK Engineering & Construction, said, "It is an honor that our project in Europe has won a global finance award for two consecutive years," and added, "As a global developer, we plan to seek business opportunities not only in Europe but also in various regions around the world."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.