An opportunity came in 1995
In 1995, a customer, Concrete Aggregates, tapped Alice Eduardo to supply steel to a building project in Malolos, Bulacan while she was delivering rice using an elf truck that she drove herself. Acting immediately on the opportunity, she looked for the right materials and delivered them personally to the client.
Right there and then, she knew that this was her first step into the industry she always wanted to partake in: construction.
Bacnotan Steel Plant in Batangas was her first major project. She did the construction of the plant’s foundation. Her next major projects were the Santa Rita and San Lorenzo plants, which are also located in Batangas.
The road to success isn’t always smooth. The Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s happened, and the construction industry was undoubtedly one of the hardest-hit industries. Alice Eduardo had just taken out bank loans to purchase high-end, brand new heavy equipment which she refused to sell at a loss. She made sacrifices so that she can keep her equipment. As the economy recovered, more opportunities came her way.
Henry Sy decided to build one big mall on the reclamation project in Pasay. Very few companies had the adequate and necessary equipment to undertake the construction of the foundation. Unsurprisingly, Sta. Elena won this project.
Soon enough, she and her team were closing large-scale projects from local and international clients. Among others, Sta. Elena’s roster of projects include:
- SM Mall of Asia,
- SM Pampanga,
- SM Bacolod,
- SM Seaside City Mall (Cebu),
- SM City Cabanatuan,
- SM Olongapo City,
- SM City Tarlac,
- SM Bay Arena,
- SM office buildings, One, Two and Three Ecom Center, and
- SMDC residential complexes, Sea Residences, Shell Residences, and Shore Residences.
As if these weren’t enough, investors from all over the world also took notice of the quality of work Sta. Elena is providing. Expectedly, more and bigger projects came its way such as Solaire Resort and Casino, City of Dreams, Belle Grande Casino and Resort and Manila Bay Resort, all of which are located in the Entertainment City in Parañaque.
Further along, Alice Eduardo also won the bid to develop the First Gen-Siemens San Gabriel Power Plant in Batangas also. The natural gas-fired power plant would cost $600 million. This makes Sta. Elena as the first Filipino contractor that Siemens hired to construct its power plant project, solidifying the fact that her construction firm meets international standards.