With construction of Turkey's third Bosporus bridge about 25% done, its consortium has secured $2.3 billion of Turkish bank loans to complete the build-own-operate deal's project financing. The roughly 2.2-km-long bridge will cross the Black Sea mouth of the Bosporus waterway between Garipçe and Poyrazköy about 35 km north of Istanbul. Work began early last year and should end in 2016. Bankers finalized the final piece of funding on May 27.
The project consortium, two-thirds owned by Istanbul IC Içtas Construction, Istanbul, is financing construction with 20% of its shareholders' capital plus the loans. Astaldi Group, Rome, owns the other third of the consortium.
A hybrid mixture of suspension and stay cables from 320-m-tall A-shaped concrete towers will support the 1.4-km-long steel-box main span. Its roughly 59-m-wide steel-box deck will carry eight highway lanes and a twin-track central railroad.
The turnkey construction joint venture contactor comprises South Korea's Hyundai Engineering & Construction and SK E&C. Michel Virlogeux, Paris, produced the design with Jean-Francois Klein of T-Engineering, S.A., Geneva.
Freysinnet Major Projects will supply 176 stay cables, as well as its 2,420-m-long suspension cables and 34 pairs of vertical hangers that will support the structure's central section. Lasting just over 10 years, including operations, the $2.9-billion BOT contract also covers some 115 km of the Northern Marmaray Motorway between Odayeri, on the Europe side of the Bosporus, and Pasaköy, in Asia.
