The $4bn-turnover Turkish contractor building a new stadium for Luton Town

“It’s not unusual for us to open in a new country.”

The UK representative for the Turkish contractor that is going to build a new football stadium for Luton Town is giving a brief run-through of the history of Limak. Gokalp Kahraman is speaking a few doors down from its London base in Berkeley Square, which nowadays seems to be a far cry from that song about nightingales given it is ringed with mostly queuing traffic.

For many, when Limak was appointed to the Luton deal – among those it beat were Mace and Sir Robert McAlpine – it was a surprise and it is probably fair to say that not many in the UK had heard of the firm until that moment.

Its basic numbers make impressive reading. It was set up in 1976, has around 30,000 employees, its turnover is more than $4bn (£3bn) and it works in 14 countries.

It has never worked in the UK before but arguably its most famous current job is another football stadium, the rebuilding of the Camp Nou in Barcelona where it is working with Australian engineer Robert Bird Group. While Limak might be unfamiliar to many in the UK, the names Barcelona and Camp Nou are certainly not.

Kahraman says he approached Luton last year about the job and the firm found out earlier this year it had won the deal. The 25,000-seat stadium will replace Luton’s current ground, the 12,000-seat Kenilworth Road, which has been its home for nearly 120 years.

It is in a PCSA for the work, which has been let as a construction management contract, and Kahraman says of the win: “We worked very hard. We gave the best technical offer in terms of methodology. We convinced the client to become a trustful partner.” The design team is led by Aecom and sports architecture specialists Sisa.

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Kahraman says Limak has since been approached by other football teams – Premier League clubs included – to look at their jobs too.

“We are in contact with other clubs, we know the market,” he says, adding that the firm has also built stadia in its native Turkey. “Who knows [but] we never go to a new country just to have one contract.”

The UK is the seventh country in which Kahraman has lived – others include Morocco, Tanzania and Poland – and he says: “In the beginning, it’s always a learning curve.” He adds: “The UK is different. Every country has rules. [In the UK] the process and procedures are quite strict and high.”

Kahraman is keen to point out that Limak is not just here to build football stadia. The firm is looking at other sectors such as reservoirs, highways, tunnelling, bridges.

“We are more than a contractor, we do investment, we have experience in PPP projects,” Kahraman adds. “In the UK there is an infrastructure need, there are infrastructure projects coming.”

He does raise concerns about the length of time that some jobs take to get going over here, having previously worked for Turkish contractor Gülermak which was one of three that was bidding the Washwood Heath train and maintenance depot near Birmingham on HS2, having worked on a similar scheme in Turkey’s capital Ankara.

Gülermak dropped out in 2023 and the job, the last major building scheme on the first phase of the project, has still not been awarded with a winner now expected at the beginning of next year.

Limak’s group of companies chairperson is Ebru Özdemir, who is behind the Global Engineer Girls (GEG) initiative, which aims to inspire the next generation of female engineers. She says GEG has supported over 1,700 female engineering students, over 300 graduates, partnered with 80 universities, collaborated with 434 mentors, and awarded 1,000 scholarships.

She wants to bring it to the UK as well. “Engineering isn’t a man’s world anymore,” Özdemir says. ”We target the disproportionate representation of women at both academic and professional levels.”

Around 60% of Limak’s work is from outside Turkey and notable schemes include a $4.4bn (£3.3bn) deal it signed in 2016 to build a new terminal building at Kuwait airport which is due to open next year while in January this year it won, as part of a Turkish-Chinese joint venture, a deal to build a new line for the Dubai Metro, called the Blue line, a 30km link worth $5.6bn (£4.2bn).

Limak wants to expand its activities in western Europe. Closer to home, it recently completed the Central Bank of Istanbul, which, at 353m high and across 72 floors, is Turkey’s tallest.

At the moment, its ambitions in the UK are more modest, with the firm looking to complete the PCSA on Luton by the end of this summer before starting construction in the autumn. Work is set to finish in time for the start of the 2028/29 football season.

But, echoing Kahraman’s point, Özdemir says the firm sees the UK as more than football stadia in the long run. ”Our portfolio spans stadiums, airports, transport corridors and clean energy assets,” she says. ”Our signature projects include the renovation of the Spotify Camp Nou, the 1915Çanakkale Bridge, Istanbul airport and Yusufeli dam, all of which showcase our capabilities in complex, high-value developments. We are ready to bring this depth of expertise to the UK.”

Kahraman says at the moment Limak has around 15 employees working on Luton, a mixture of Turkish staff and those from the UK. The firm wants to hire more UK staff and he adds: “You can’t go to another country and say ‘I’ll bring in all my own people’. That doesn’t work. It can be a big error. Our strategy would be to become a local contractor.”

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Despite the firm being a newcomer here, it has quickly learnt one truism – that along with death and taxes, can be added this: margins in UK contracting are pretty thin.

“Margins here are quite low here,” Kahraman admits. “This creates nervousness because of the small amounts.” Spoken like a UK contracting veteran.