Palmera highlights landscaping role in 2022 Qatar World Cup

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Palmera highlights landscaping role in 2022 Qatar World Cup

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Trickle down hard, soft-scaping contracts in Qatar present now or never challenge to firms

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Palmera, an integrated outdoor contractor and supplier in Qatar, has highlighted the landscaping opportunities also present in the build-up to Qatar 2022 FIFA world cup, and how it intends to fend off the inbound competitors now setting up shop in the country to bid for these projects.

General manager, Amer Mahasen, says: “The construction in Qatar will require vast landscaping to beautify the cities that are going to be built up between now and 2022, whether it’s Dukkan or Doha, so a lot contracts will come up through the market, and it will be very good business.”

“We are looking at larger projects: sports cities, hotels, resorts – whether governmental or private like the Lusail project, which is absolutely the largest construction project in the world.”

While the landscaping market in Qatar is still undeveloped at present, companies from Dubai in particular are turning their attention towards the numerous impending projects across the Gulf.

r Mahasen notes: “The demand in terms of both quantity and quality is beginning to exceed what the local companies can provide, and that’s why international companies are starting to move in.”

The challenge then is for quality focused local companies such as Palmera to build up their presence in the market operations to the scale where they can fend off the arriving competition.

Mohamed Moataz AlKhayat, CEO of Palmera’s sister UCC, notes: “Our strategy is to build up very fast, but on solid ground – to have the proper personnel to manage things; the proper materials to sell in the market; and, the proper execution, management and setup for a company.”

Amer Mahasen adds: “Most of us have worked in Dubai before, so we know how they think, what they do and how they attack markets – we know all of this and we just have to be better than them.”

For its part, Palmera has already executed several luxurious projects, including palaces, and the firm expects to grow significantly from its current workforce of around 600 personnel in order to ideally position itself to tender for the largest of the Q2022 projects that will soon get underway.

Ramez AlKhayat, MD of UCC, adds: “Qatar is a country under development: it’s still being built and we’re a long way from reaching the maintenance stage. So everything is good business as long as you have a vision for it, and we have already done quite a bit of damage to the competition.”