By Brazil Stock Guide – A consortium including Novonor’s infrastructure arm won the auction for Brazil’s Rota dos Sertões highway concession on Thursday, marking the former Odebrecht group’s return to infrastructure concessions in the country.
The Consórcio 116 Sertões offered a 19.6% discount on the basic toll tariff set in the auction rules, according to Brazil’s development bank BNDES, which structured the project alongside the Ministry of Transport and federal transport regulator ANTT.
The winning group is made up of Nova Infra Invest, Novonor’s infrastructure vehicle, Galapagos Capital and Portuguese construction company Mota-Engil. Each partner holds one-third of the consortium.
The 30-year concession includes about 429 kilometers of the BR-116 highway in Bahia, 66 kilometers in Pernambuco and another 7.2 kilometers of the BR-324 in Bahia, part of the ring road around Feira de Santana.
The project requires an estimated R$ 4.1 billion in investments over the life of the contract. Planned works include about 95 kilometers of road duplication, 45 kilometers of marginal roads in urban crossings and a bypass around the city of Serrinha, in Bahia.
The route is considered an important logistics corridor linking parts of Brazil’s Southeast and Northeast, with relevance for freight transport, regional mobility and road safety.
The auction drew two other bidders. Consórcio 116 Sertões beat a group formed by Ivy Capital and Infra Brasil in live bidding, while a consortium formed by Aspen Participações and DMDL also took part.
For Novonor, formerly known as Odebrecht, the result carries symbolic weight. The group was once one of Brazil’s most prominent infrastructure players before being hit by the Lava Jato corruption probe, financial distress and a court-supervised restructuring process.
Nova Infra Invest already operates road concessions in Panama and Peru, but Rota dos Sertões is its first concession in Brazil. The company has said it is looking at other opportunities in transport, sanitation and special infrastructure projects.
For BNDES, the auction strengthens its role as a project structurer in Brazil’s infrastructure pipeline. The bank says its road concession portfolio covers more than 11,000 kilometers across the country and could mobilize about R$ 100 billion in investments in federal and state highways.
The Rota dos Sertões auction is the fifth federal highway lot brought to market under the road-structuring agreement between BNDES and the Ministry of Transport.