Participants in the Leaders Program learned about the company's presence in the country and some of its most representative projects.
Acciona’s Director of Institutional Relations, Joaquín Mollinedo, and the company’s Director of Strategy and Analysis for Infrastructure, Pierre Buffet, met with the Leaders to discuss Acciona’s presence in Australia and its long-term interests in the country.
Acciona employs more than 37,000 people across the 40 countries in which it operates. In addition to Australia, its strategic markets include North America, Chile, South Africa, and India.
Having established operations in Australia in 2002, Acciona was the first Spanish company to set up a permanent presence in the country, according to Joaquín Mollinedo. The multinational’s Australian portfolio includes desalination and water treatment plants, wind farms, and major transport infrastructure projects. Among the most notable are the Legacy Way motorway, featuring twin 4.6-kilometre tunnels; the award-winning Toowoomba Second Range Crossing; and the Sydney Light Rail project, valued at €1.7 billion.
As Pierre Buffet explained, Australia is one of the few countries where Acciona Infrastructure delivers projects across all five of its business divisions: Construction, Concessions, Water, Industry, and Services. These activities are carried out under a sustainable development model. Joaquín Mollinedo emphasised that sustainability is one of the company’s core pillars, noting that in 2016 Acciona became “one of the first construction companies in the world to be certified as carbon neutral.”
Among Acciona’s Australian projects, Pierre Buffet highlighted the Legacy Way tunnel, describing it as “an exact replica of Madrid’s M-30 tunnel,” which the Leaders were scheduled to visit later that day. “This is a clear example of how we export our capabilities,” he said.
Nicholas Hudson was particularly interested in understanding how the company operates in Australia. “We become involved in projects alongside local companies, which have the relationships, information, and understanding of the specific characteristics of each region,” explained Pierre Buffet.
The Leaders also showed considerable interest in the Kwinana Waste-to-Energy Plant in Western Australia, a project that Acciona is developing as part of a consortium with local partners. According to Pierre Buffet, the facility is likely to “become the international benchmark” for this type of infrastructure.
Following the meeting, the Leaders took part in an impressive demonstration of the virtual reality technology used by Acciona to recreate and showcase some of its most significant projects, providing an immersive insight into the company’s engineering and infrastructure capabilities.
