Diverse and special

Tomasz Cudowski, ‘Eurobuild CEE’: In two sentences, tell us what 2019 was like on the Polish construction market? Dariusz Grzeszczak, partner and CEO, Erbud: It was a stable year, which, hopefully, signals a few years of normalisation ahead of us. Basically, the prices of building materials and labour are no longer rising so erratically, so we can relax a bit when working out our project budgets and taking part in tenders. But you still need to give yourself some kind of margin just in case? Plus or minus 5 pct is enough. Three years ago there were some huge jumps in prices, so in 2017/18 there was a great deal of balance cleaning to do for construction firms. Now we have EBITDA profit of PLN 58 mln at Erbud for 9M 2019 [this conversation took place at the end of January 2020, when the results for the whole of 2019 had yet to be published – editor’s note] However, it’s not all a bed of roses: large EU orders are coming to an end, the labour shortages