srbg

March 11, 2014

Sichuan Road & Bridge in Tanzania

This isn’t particularly recent, but I thought today would be as good a slow news day as any to mention a contract won late last year by Sichuan Road and Bridge Group (SRBG, 四川路桥集团) to build 65km of roads in Tanzania. A number of such contracts, mostly funded by the African Development Bank and the Japan International Cooperation Agency, have been awarded to Chinese companies in Tanzania, first in November and then again in February. Other than SRBG, the contractors include CHICO (中国河南国际合作集团), Powerchina (中国水电建设集团) and CCECC (中国土木工程集团). SRBG’s task will be to pave a road leading up to the (also Chinese-built) Unity Bridge over the Rovuma River, the border with Mozambique.

This was SRBG’s main foreign contract abroad last year, other than the steelwork for the Hålogaland bridge in Narvik, northern Norway.

February 3, 2014

work under way on Hålogaland bridge steelwork

Work on the steel structures for the Hålogaland bridge in Narvik, northern Norway, is “formally under way”, although the actual construction of the steelwork will only start in the second half of this year and it will take some time until it gets delivered to Norway.

From China, that is. The steelwork for the suspension bridge, to be the second longest of its kind in Norway, was awarded last October to a Chinese contractor, Sichuan Road and Bridge Group, about which I wrote a thing or two a couple of months ago.

A minor accident (unrelated to the work of the Chinese contractor) occurred last week at the building site.

December 22, 2013

Eritrea: Sichuan bridge-builder goes into gold mining

Sichuan Road and Bridge Group (SRBG, 四川路桥集团), recently written about in this blog in connection with its first European contract, the Hålogaland bridge in Norway, has been diversifying into a rather different area. Finance and Investment (金融投资报) reported in late October that SRBG will enter a partnership with the Eritrean government to explore for gold and other metals in a 1000 km2 area in the Bisha-Zara region. The exploration phase, expected to last between three and five years, could require an investment of around $33m.

The first major mining project in Eritrea, the Bisha mine, a joint venture between the Eritrean government and Nevsun from Canada, produced gold from 2011 until a few months ago, when it switched to copper. Nevsun has been criticised for relying in its Eritrean partner’s use of conscripts as “forced labour“, a charge the company denied at a subcommittee meeting in the Canadian Parliament. Eritrea had received a $60m Chinese loan to start the Bisha project in 2007.

SFECO, a Shanghai government-owned company also active in Eritrea, bought a 60% interest in the Zara gold mine from Chalice in September last year.

December 5, 2013

[new article] Hålogaland: a Chinese bridge in Norway

I have a new article up on the contract awarded in October to Sichuan Road & Bridge Group (SRBG) for the steelwork of the Hålogaland bridge in northern Norway. This is the first time SRBG wins a tender in Europe: while they have a long history of activities overseas, so far they were restricted to Asia and Africa, in particular with a long presence in Eritrea. At home, they’re behind quite a few rather impressive bridges, including the Xihoumen, the second longest suspension bridge in the world. Somewhat less impressive is Chuanjiao, a company related to SRBG, one of whose bridges partially collapsed during construction last May, adding another fatal incident to China’s record of falling bridges.

Go read the full text.