Ewa Zielińska, Ubifrance Economic Mission: What does GSE Polska do?
Danny Kambo, General Manager of GSE Polska: We design and build industrial and logistics facilities on a “turnkey” basis, and recently, commercial ones as well. We are a general contractor, but this should be understood in the broadest sense of the word. We perform all the traditional functions of a general contractor: we develop the concept of the facility, obtain the permits required for construction, find subcontractors and provide supervision over them, and participate in every official inspection. But that is not all. We take comprehensive care of the client from the earliest stage: we can find a suitable plot of land for them and handle the legal formalities preparing it for construction, and we can also find a substitute investor if the client lacks funds. We examine the client’s needs, organize them, and translate them into a project, proposing solutions that are most appropriate and at the same time most cost-effective. After handing over the finished facility, we help its user with any potential problems throughout the entire warranty period. Our specificity also lies in our own, original way of managing a project: from beginning to end, the client is taken care of by a permanent, two-person team of GSE experts – a commercial manager and a project manager, whom the client can contact at any time with any problem, whether of a commercial, legal, or technical nature. Of fundamental importance is the fact that we have the very significant capital and technical backing of our parent company, the powerful French GSE Group. These factors provide every investor with ironclad financial guarantees, excellent quality, price stability, and adherence to deadlines. In mid-2009, we offered the Polish logistics real estate market an innovative design and construction system, MODULOG, based on the concept of modular buildings erected from prefabricated elements. It significantly speeds up the design and construction process, significantly lowering the costs of the entire investment. This is the GSE Group’s response to the global financial crisis.
E. Z.: What have you already built in Poland?
D. K.: We have been operating in Poland for 10 years. We appeared here in 1998 at the invitation of one of the GSE Group’s key clients, Michelin, which took over a tire factory in Olsztyn. Since then, we have completed over a dozen large projects. We started with a warehouse hall with an area of 42,000 sq. m for Michelin in Olsztyn. Among the larger undertakings, one should also mention the construction of 52,000 sq. m of halls in Teresin for our regular client, the ProLogis concern; the implementation of similar, large logistics facilities for Benckiser in Nowy Dwór Mazowiecki and for the Lafarge cement plant in Pińczów; the construction of a headquarters with warehouse halls for the press distributor Kolporter in Izabelin; and similarly for the Lyreco Group in Michałowice and ProLogis in Błonie. We also handled the expansion of Michelin’s logistics centers – by 70,000 sq. m in Olsztyn and 35,000 sq. m in Pruszków. A large development company from Luxembourg, Real Management, ordered 48,000 sq. m of warehouses from us. For Indesit, we built a washing machine and refrigerator factory with an area of 80,000 m2, along with a logistics center with an area of 48,000 sq. m in Radomsko. I would like to point out that the construction of the logistics part of this facility, along with the purchase of the land and the execution of the project, was financed by a substitute investor we found, ING Lease, which is an innovation in Poland that addresses the crisis situation. In Aleksandrów, for the American giant Procter&Gamble, we built a factory with a production hall of 15,000 sq. m and office and social facilities of 1,500 sq. m. Currently, in Radomsko, we have under construction a warehouse hall with a complex structure and a size of 45,000 sq. m, as well as a two-level high-bay warehouse, reaching 45 m in height, with a total area of 2×15,000 sq. m. This is a so-called high bay, which we are executing in cooperation with the German company Shaffer. We designed both facilities for the Jysk supermarket chain. These are our flagship achievements in Poland.
E. Z.: Do you only handle such large projects?
D. K.: Only from a certain threshold does a project become profitable for us, and our offer competitive. This is in the order of magnitude of a facility with an area of 8-10,000 sq. m. However, it happens that we carry out smaller projects due to the importance of the client or promising business prospects.
E. Z.: How do you see the future of GSE Polska?
D. K.: Over the last 10 years of Polish prosperity, we have offered solutions well-suited to the realities of this market in the field of building logistics centers and factories. We will continue this activity, although in the era of the crisis, we are observing a decline in orders in this segment. In this more difficult economic situation, our efforts are aimed at adapting our offer to the more modest capabilities of Polish investors. One of the adaptive moves is introducing our economical MODULOG system to the Polish market, which has been very well received here. No wonder, because it allows for the realization of this type of facility just as solidly and functionally as the traditional method, but simpler, faster, and cheaper. Based on this new concept, we have already submitted many offers, and we believe that we will sign the first “modulog” contract this year, probably in Silesia. Details regarding the innovative MODULOG system can be found by browsing our publications and our websites http://www.gse.fr/po/ and http://www.gsegroup.com/. We also anticipate a conference on this topic soon. We also hope that the facilities we propose regarding the financing of construction projects, which have already proven themselves well in Europe, will be adopted on a wider scale in Poland. I hope that in combination with the full guarantees provided by our experience and the financial and technical backing in the form of a powerful parent company, all the strengths of the updated GSE Polska offer will act as an encouragement to domestic investors. In 2007, the GSE Group acquired the company GAM Engenierie, specializing in the shopping center sector, and we are currently expanding our general contracting offer to this field as well. We are currently working on the valuation of several such investments. There is a chance that by the end of the year, GSE Polska will sign contracts for the implementation of projects for at least two shopping centers that would be built in southern Poland.