Globalvia changes course. The concessionaire looks beyond tolls and is already preparing large investments in markets such as high-speed rail and bus concessions. A new strategy motivated by the “few opportunities” currently offered by toll roads and which will be boosted by the company’s entry into Ilsa, the group that will compete, through the Iryo brand, with Renfe and Ouigo on the AVE starting this fall. In a few days, the investment will become official.
Globalvia will thus become the long-awaited industrial partner that Ilsa is looking for. The company will have 25% of the shareholding, Air Nostrum will have 30% and the remaining 45% will go to Trenitalia, the public operator controlled by the Italian State.
The investment has been analyzed in recent months by Adif and Globalvia already has “all approvals ready.” In principle, Iryo will start operating on the Madrid-Barcelona route at the end of October or beginning of November.
This was explained this Tuesday by the CEO of Globalvia, Javier Pérez Fortea, in a meeting with the media. The manager also presented the details of the acquisition of 49% of Go-Ahead that the group has just closed. An operation undertaken jointly with the Australian Kinetic, which will be the one that will keep the remaining 51% of the bus company.
The Spanish will disburse a total of 317 million pounds (366 million euros), in case the offer of 647.7 million pounds launched by both companies is accepted by the shareholders of Go-Ahead. The bidders need to reach 75% acceptance and plan to exclude the firm from the Stock Exchange after taking control of it.
With the purchase of Go-Ahead, Globalvia will strengthen the bus business. The British firm services the United Kingdom, Singapore, Ireland, Sweden, Norway and Germany, operates a fleet of more than 6,000 buses in England and is responsible for a quarter of London’s public buses.
After closing this operation, Globalvia does not rule out entering the new bus concessions that will be tendered in Spain. «It is a market in which there is going to be movement and we are very interested. We could tender any project that arises in Spain alone, but we could also go with Go-Ahead”, Pérez Fortea highlighted.
The Government is going to design a new concession map for bus services between autonomous communities with a series of tenders that could start as of 2024. A reorganization with which the Executive wants to put order in the market and reduce the current 79 concessions to 22 contracts. Globalvia’s idea is to bid for some of these tenders.
But the investment plan of the concessionaire is not limited to the bus. The group “closely follows” five major projects in which it would invest 2,000 million in the next 18 months. Two of them would be related to “opportunities in the high-speed market”, one of them in Europe and the other in the United States, as explained by the group’s CEO. Another is the acquisition of Go-Ahead and another two would be related to the toll road market.
“We are making a change to become mobility providers instead of infrastructure managers. The intention is that in five years the mobility branch represents 30% of the group’s portfolio”, Pérez Fortea assured.
