In Serbia, there are 188 companies registered for the construction of hydrotechnical facilities, which includes the construction of waterways, dams and embankments, wharves, marinas, embankments, as well as the fortification of coasts. Companies from this activity, according to the data of the rating company CompanyWall, achieved a total income of 36.8 billion dinars in 2021, almost the same as in the pandemic year 2020.
The most successful 20 among them achieved slightly more than 20 billion dinars in revenue, i.e. more than half of the entire activity. Their total net profit is close to 2.3 billion dinars.
Until the results for 2022 arrive, however, it remains to be noted that the pre-pandemic year 2019 was more successful for this activity, when the total income of all companies amounted to slightly more than 47 billion dinars.
The list of the most successful is headed by Millennium Team, the company that at the same time employed the most workers – a total of 410 at the end of 2021. According to the number of employees, in second place is the former Yugoslav giant, the company “Ivan Milutinović – PIM”, which employed 200 workers that year, while among the other companies on the list, HSV from Vlasoticin, Mašinokop from Šabac, Vodoprivreda from Požarevac and another former Yugoslav company stand out giant – Hidrotehnika-Hidroenergetika from Belgrade.
Millenium Team, however, left far behind all colleagues from the industry when looking at the realized net profit in 2021 – with 1.28 billion dinars of profit, that company made exactly six times more than the second-placed HSV from Vlasoticin. It should, however, be borne in mind that Millenium Team is not only engaged in the design of water supply systems, sewerage, reinforced concrete collectors, pumping stations, plants for the preparation of drinking water, plants for the purification of sanitary and industrial waste water – which is part of the construction of hydrotechnical facilities, but also in other areas of civil engineering, as well as high-rise construction and energy, and on their portal they highlight the activity of humanitarian demining.
The second-ranked company in terms of profit, HSV from Vlasotinc , follows Millenium Team insofar as, in addition to the developed activity of building hydrotechnical facilities, it also deals with civil engineering and high-rise construction. HSV has a long-term cooperation with “Srbijavod”, and some of the projects they worked on were rehabilitation works in the Moravica, Tulovska river and South Morava and Vlasina watersheds. This company is also engaged in works on the modernization of the “Pančevački rit” hydrosystem.
Third place among the top 20 companies in 2021 was taken by Aqua Mont Service, which ended the year with 139 million dinars in profit. At first glance, Aqua Mont seems like a small company, with 35 employees, but this company is the majority shareholder of the famous Hidrotehnika-Hydroenergetika, and owns 91.35 percent of its capital. Hidrotehnika itself ended the year with a profit of 57.5 million dinars, and at that time it had 124 employees. By the way, this is a company whose references include the construction of the Kisir dam in Algeria (completed in 2009) and the Sarat dam in Tunisia (construction completed in 2015).
Investment plans of the state are certainly important for the business of companies from this industry when it comes to river and water infrastructure in general. On the one hand, the implementation of the “Clean Serbia” project, worth 3.2 billion euros, which involves the construction of sewage and waste water treatment facilities throughout Serbia, is underway. The contractor is the Chinese company China Road and Bridge Corporation (CRBC), and the then Minister of Construction, Transport and Infrastructure Tomislav Momirović said that Serbian companies will be involved in the project “in a percentage of not less than 49 percent of the total engaged subcontractors”.
The state also counts on projects in the field of river transport infrastructure development. The total value of the priority projects, the part of which Serbia is responsible for financing, amounts to 336 million euros, according to the data of the Ministry of Construction, Transport and Infrastructure.
Let’s also not forget that Prime Minister Ana Brnabić stated in her exposition that the “new energy policy” requires investments of 12 billion euros, as well as that the construction of two new reversible hydropower plants – “Bistrica” and “Đerdap 3” is planned.
