Mexican Builder Mulls Punta Colonet

ICA, the integrated Mexican construction firm, is mulling its strategy regarding the $4bn+ port at Punta Colonet in Baja California. “It’s quite important, we’re studying it, we’re looking for partners,” Alonso Quintana, CFO at ICA, tells LatinFinance. Mexico’s government opened bidding late August for the contract to build LatAm’s first greenfield port. Quintana adds that a natural partner would be Goldman Sachs Infrastructure Partners, with which ICA worked on the first Farac project. “It’s a bit more interesting as a construction project than as the whole concession, but we would still be looking at the concession as well,” says the CFO. Quintana expects the winner to use traditional project finance to fund the deal. “Once the cashflows are transparent enough and visible for the banks, there’s ever more creative ways of putting the money in,” says the official. The government says the project should be ready to start construction next year for completion in 2012. Some analysts say it could cost as much as $7bn. The West Coast facility is the biggest in president Calderon’s infrastructure plan and should divert container traffic away from the congested US ports of Long Beach and LA, via a planned rail connection to the US. Carlos Slim’s IDEAL has formed a consortium to bid with Grupo Ferromex and cargo terminal operator MTC Holdings. The government says it has more than 50 interested bidders. Hutchison Port Holdings, SSA Marine, DP World, Union Pacific and BNSF are also expected to participate.