The collapse of the Buickingham Group has seriously delayed Liverpool’s Anfield Road end rebuild.
Replacement contractor, Rayner Rowen, has since put its
own stamp on the project and is working hard to deliver the project as fast as
possible for Liverpool’s owners Fenway Sports Group. But it is a far from ideal
situation on the back of delays described as “really complex and deeply frustrating”
by Liverpool CEO Billy Hogan.
Lost revenue is racking up and with 11,000 seats unavailable
and the stand’s upper tier still closed, Liverpool are finding it increasingly
difficult to relocate supporters who had purchased tickets in the unfinished
section of the stand all the way up until the New Year.
Liverpool chose Tier 1 contractor Buckingham Group in 2021
after extensive research into some of their other projects, which included
delivering new stadiums for Brighton & Hove Albion, MK Dons and Brentford,
as well as new stands at The Oval cricket ground in London.
Buckingham was buoyant earlier this year and confident the
stand would be completed on time for the start of this season despite posting a
pre-tax loss of almost £11million ($13.3m) in December.
But with Brexit and the war in Ukraine pushing up material
prices and a labour shortage adding to problems, it fell on even tougher times
in July with sections of the stand not finished.
Just two days before the start of the Premier League season,
the majority of workers were pulled off-site once it emerged that Buckingham
could no longer continue trading.
It was messy and Liverpool had no choice but to announce
delays to the full opening, initially until October, and then extend the
timeframe when Buckingham Group fell into administration by early September.
The positive news is that, with Preston-based Rayner Rowen’s
cranes moving again and a site now back to full function with 80 per cent of
the initial sub-contractors still in place, the next steps towards completion
are underway.
The stand already accommodates some supporters and has a
modern look to its exterior but there is no quick fix, with the logistical
issues making it harder. One particularly
difficult aspect is the stop-start process they have to go through mid-season,
especially in periods like this week when Liverpool had three games in eight
days.
Financial losses
With income streams at Liverpool already hit by missing out
on Champions League football, this setback is painful financially as
well as logistically.
Owners FSG recently agreed to sell a minority stake in the
club to American sports investment firm Dynasty Equity in an attempt to pay
down debts. The deal worth between $100million (£82m) and $200m (£164m) helped
clean up a balance sheet hit by the new £50million AXA Training Centre and the
ongoing Anfield expansion plans, which started in the Main Stand and moved onto
this project, which is understood to be costing between £80million and
£100million.
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