Check out the Valor Econômico newspaper article that highlights the OEC’s resumption of growth

Published on January 19, an article in Valor Econômico newspaper highlights the new works won by OEC and how this will expand the company’s backlog and generate new jobs.

You can access the full article here or read below.

OEC has fattened its portfolio again in 2022

After years of downturn, Odebrecht building company expands ‘backlog’ by US$ 845 million at the end of last year

By Taís Hirata – From São Paulo

After years of shrinking, OEC, the engineering arm of Novonor (formerly Odebrecht), has again expanded its project portfolio in 2021. The backlog grew by about $845 million last year. The construction company is seen as the main vehicle for the group’s resumption of growth, which is facing the largest court-supervised reorganization ever carried out in Brazil.

The OEC had ended 2020 with $2.74 billion worth of projects in its portfolio, down 20% from the previous year. With the restructuring process of the
the goal is to reach 2025 with a backlog of approximately $4.25 billion.

“2021 was a year still marked by the pandemic, the company suffered with the postponement of projects that were planned. On the other hand, we were able to better structure our operation in Brazil and it was a year of important achievements,” says Raul Ribeiro, OEC officer for Brazil.

The portfolio’s growth was driven mainly by the increase in the scope of contracts in Brazil and Peru, in addition to major projects won in Africa, especially the work of a refinery in Angola, worth $920 million.

The expectation for 2022 is positive. At least in the Brazilian market, the building company projects a growth between 20% and 30%, according to the executive. This rise should be driven mainly by the infrastructure auctions held in 2021, which should make this year the hiring of the works required in the contracts, Ribeiro says.

“In Brazil, the company has a very large ‘pipeline’, of BRL6 billion to BRL7 billion, of projects that we are envisioning for the medium and long term. Several of them should happen in 2022, not least because of last year’s auctions. These are private projects, which have a fixed deadline to start construction. There is a great expectation that, in the energy, sanitation and logistics sectors, important private bids will be launched this year”, he says.

In these three segments, another strategy adopted by the company has been to study on its own specific projects that will be auctioned, to propose differentiated engineering solutions and then seek possible investors. Ribeiro highlights that participating in concessions is not a focus for the group, but that the OEC does not rule out entering as a minority shareholder in consortia.

The officer says that infrastructure concessions have been essential for the recovery of the construction market as a whole, but also highlights the importance of public projects.

In the last few days, the OEC confirmed its victory in a public tender from the Alagoas government, to build another stretch of the Sertão Canal in the state. The contract, of 40 months, totals BRL

429.8 million.