IN Brief:
- Afcons Infrastructure has been selected for a €677.07m railway project in Croatia.
- The scope includes track reconstruction, second-track construction, overhead electrification, signalling, and telecoms.
- The project marks Afcons’ entry into the European infrastructure construction market.
Afcons Infrastructure has been selected as the most suitable bidder for a €677.07m railway rehabilitation and construction project in Croatia.
The project covers reconstruction of the existing track and construction of a second railway line on the Dugo Selo–Novska corridor. The scope also includes overhead electrification, signalling, and telecommunication works.
Afcons has described the scheme as its largest international order to date and a significant step into the European infrastructure market. The value is approximately ₹7,544 crore excluding taxes, with the package forming part of Croatia’s rail modernisation programme.
The Dugo Selo–Novska line is one of Croatia’s major railway investment corridors, intended to improve capacity, performance, and reliability on the country’s rail network. The wider programme has previously been identified as one of the country’s largest railway schemes, with EU-backed investment supporting reconstruction, second-track delivery, station upgrades, modernised infrastructure, and improved safety.
The works are expected to involve a long delivery period, reflecting the scale of rebuilding an existing rail corridor while introducing new track, systems, electrification, and telecoms infrastructure. That combination places civil engineering, rail systems, power, signalling, communications, possessions, safety management, and operational constraints into the same delivery environment.
The contract also strengthens a visible pattern of European rail investment. IN Site recently reported that the Feronord consortium had won a major package on Sweden’s East Link rail project, covering 36km of railway, 28 bridges, three viaducts, and extensive earthworks. Croatia’s Dugo Selo–Novska scheme is different in scale and structure, but both projects reflect the same long-term priority across Europe: rail corridors with higher capacity, better resilience, and lower-carbon transport potential.
For Afcons, the Croatian package gives the company a substantial European reference point in a market with high technical standards, mature procurement processes, and established regional competitors. Indian infrastructure contractors have delivered complex schemes across domestic and international markets, but entry into Europe brings a different layer of requirements around documentation, compliance, local supply chains, labour rules, environmental controls, and client governance.
The scale of the package also shows how railway construction is becoming more systems-led. Reconstruction and second-track delivery can no longer be separated from electrification, signalling, telecoms, and testing where clients are seeking capacity and reliability gains. Earthworks and track construction remain central, but commercial and programme risk increasingly sits in sequencing, integration, commissioning, and handover.
Major rail schemes often look most advanced when civil engineering progress is visible on the ground. The more demanding stage can arrive later, when systems installation, certification, operational readiness, and timetable integration have to line up. Contractors able to manage those interfaces are likely to become more competitive as railway clients seek fewer gaps between construction delivery and operational performance.
Croatia’s rail programme also sits within a wider European push to shift more passenger and freight movement onto rail where network capacity allows. Upgraded double-track, electrified corridors can support higher speeds, improved service resilience, and lower-carbon transport, but those benefits depend on construction delivery being matched by long-term operating and maintenance planning.
Afcons’ selection gives the company a major European infrastructure foothold and gives Croatia another delivery partner for its rail modernisation programme. Mobilisation will now be critical, with local delivery capacity, programme interfaces, supply chain control, and systems coordination all needing to align before the project can move from award to sustained construction progress.
