Despite the record debts, this industry holds tight. Here are 30 giants

“The industry in total collapse”, “A wave of company insolvency”, “It’s bad” – such headlines in recent months have been titled texts about Polish construction companies. It is said that the last two years has been the third such large breakdown for the industry since Poland’s accession to the European Union. A large part of the works stands. Apartments are built less because there are no cheap loans. Less roads are built because money from KPO does not flow. The Central Communication Port is not built at all, because instead of hammering the first shovel, there is a paper fight against the mass of comments about the location of the new airport.

Despite all these bad news, it is not so bad. The more that new, better times are about to come.

Cake for the top

The Polish construction sector is a giant.

Almost one and a half million Poles work in the industry. The construction site generates a total of about 10 percent Polish GDP.

According to analysts, the value of the Polish construction market is expected to exceed EUR 100 billion next year. This is twice as much compared to how much the industry was worth 8 years ago.

The sector is still crushed. A total of over 700,000 operate in it. various companies. But of course, the leading is the leader of this cake. According to analysts from the Spectis research company, 300 largest construction groups operating in Poland had over PLN 150 billion in revenues in 2023, i.e. over 60 percent. how much all medium or large construction companies in Poland generate.

Waiting for a breakthrough

Although we are talking about a gigantic industry, it has been uphill in recent years. High costs of energy, fuels, building materials and salaries did not help in increases. But basically all Polish companies had such problems, which through Pandemia and later the war in Ukraine had to deal with broken supply chains, the outflow of eastern markets, inflation.

Other industries have shifted, as it usually happens, at the client. But the construction site had no one to transfer the costs at too much, because she just didn’t have orders. In the last few years, the number of tenders for the construction or reconstruction of road or rail infrastructure has dropped dramatically. The change of power many great infrastructure projects hibernated – it was not known what to do with the nuclear power plant, what to do with CPK or investments on railways. Although unlocking EU funds from KPO turned out to be a great success, the investments did not come immediately.

Today the situation stabilizes and the prospects are optimistic. The new government has been auditing key investments. Large investments, such as CPK, renewable energy sources, nuclear power plant, high speed railway, will continue. Tenders for road, rail and energy infrastructure have also started. Thanks to this, the market is to grow by a few percent.

Spaniard and Austrians on the podium

When preparing the ranking of the largest players of the construction sector in Poland, we took into account primarily large infrastructure contractors, not counting developers. In this ranking, we also did not take into account the entire palette of companies providing products or services for construction, i.e. those producing cement, concrete, glass, construction chemistry, windows, roofs, doors, and so you could still exchange for a long time.

When creating our list, we used the data provided to us by the Dun & Bradstreet research agency. The key criterion was the value of revenues achieved for 2023. The data for last year is not yet available to all companies, hence the dishonest procedure would be based only on 2024.

And so, according to our guidelines, Budimex is the largest construction company in the country. Although the company has its headquarters in Warsaw, it belongs to the Spanish group Ferrovial.

In 2023, the company generated almost PLN 8.5 billion in revenues in Poland. Net profit was over PLN 749 million.

Budimex is the general contractor for road, rail or airport infrastructure. He builds highways, fast roads, stations, airports, museums, courts of courts and even churches. The company is behind such recent projects as the West Dworzec in Warsaw, a flood tank in Racibórz Dolny, a section of the Baltic Pipe gas pipeline, the Częstochowa beltway, the Chorzów planetarium or Turów Power Plant.

The Austrian Strabag came second, which has been operating in Poland since 1987. This company has built almost 40 percent. Polish highways and every fifth kilometer of fast routes.

The third place also went to the Austrians, because the Porr company with the headquarters in Vienna. They are behind the realization of the famous tunnel under Świna, connecting the islands of Uznam and Wolin, and investments such as the LNG terminal in Świnoujście or the Polish-Litori gas pipeline.

What other companies were included in our ranking of building giants?

30 largest construction companies in Poland