Czech builders have completed a customs terminal in Belarus

Construction company Metrostav has finished the first contract in Belarus. The customs terminal was opened in Scitomiric several days ago. The ceremony was attended by Alexander Lukashenko, the president of Belarus, and other political leaders. The project comprised a logistics centre with storage sheds, an administration building and operational background necessary. The project was funded from the European Export Fund. It consisted of many various parts. The most important of them was the construction of two single story storage sheds with the total area of approximately 20,000 square metres. This area corresponds to the area of a medium-size shopping centre or nearly 4 football pitches. An interesting thing is the fact that the adjacent three-storey administration building has external walls with sturdy reinforced concrete frames because of the increased seismism of the area. „Conditions in Belarus are very specific; their construction habits are different from our country. It took us a long time to get accustomed to collaboration with sub-contractors, who often did not keep to deadlines. When somebody promised to arrive in an hour, he usually came in three hours or rather the next day. We had to adapt to these habits,” says Josef Dufek, the director of the Metrostav organisation component in Belarus In addition to the above-mentioned structures in the terminal area, the builers built, for example, a dormitory for drivers, a washing station, a sewage treatment plant, a gatehouse, a custom house, a maintenance building, an artesian well or a fire depot. Metrostav realised the work for Beltamožservis state-owned company on the basis of a turn-key contract. The terminal ensures clearance within the framework of the customs union of Belarus with Russia and Kazakhstan. Owing to the fact that the client was content with the Czech company, he concluded a new contract with it for the development of a similar transport-logistics centre in Brest. „Taking into consideration the perspectives of the Belarus construction market, our company is working on tenders for other construction projects not only for logistics projects but also, for example, for railways or for the area of the separation of communal waste,” says Ing. Karel Volf, the personnel deputy manager of Division 3 Metrostav construction company has currently reinforced its position on foreign markets. For example, it has recently finished running tunnels of metro between the Finnish cities of Helsinki and Espog and has commenced the construction of another road tunnel in Iceland or the modernisation of a part of the Warsaw circle road. In addition, it is acting through its daughter companies in many other countries, such as Germany, Austria, Serbia or Russia etc.