Bell Gully may have led the New Zealand legal team, but one of the more interesting features of the Warkworth to Te Hana Public Private Partnership (PPP) is the involvement of global infrastructure specialist Ashurst Perkins Coie.
For a 26‑kilometre stretch of Northland highway, that might sound like over‑lawyering. The concrete may be poured in Northland, but much of the legal engineering is done by lawyers who have spent decades structuring billion‑dollar infrastructure deals around the world.
The Warkworth to Te Hana project will deliver a new four‑lane motorway between Warkworth and Te Hana, with interchanges at Warkworth, Wellsford and Te Hana and is one of New Zealand’s most significant infrastructure initiatives aimed at improving resilience, safety and connectivity between Auckland and Whangārei.
The PPP award to the Northway consortium – led by ACCIONA Construction, ACCIONA Concesiones and Aberdeen Investments carries an overall project cost of about NZ$3.65 billion (net present value) over a 32‑year construction and operating term.
This kind of transaction is no longer simply about building roads but is about international finance, sophisticated procurement structures, institutional investors, cross‑border lending, construction risk, insurance, refinancing rights and concession agreements that run for decades.
Why bring in an international firm?
Global law firm Ashurst Perkins Coie and leading New Zealand firm Bell Gully acted as an integrated commercial legal team advising NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi (NZTA) on all aspects of the structuring and procurement of the PPP, including contractual negotiations and finalisation of the Project Agreement with Northway.
Their work included updating and optimising New Zealand’s standard form PPP Project Agreement, drawing both on past New Zealand PPPs and international precedents.
New Zealand firms understand the domestic regulatory environment, but it was necessary to introduce global infrastructure practices such as Ashurst Perkins Coie bring experience advising governments, financiers, pension funds and infrastructure investors on multi‑billion‑dollar transport, energy and social infrastructure projects across multiple jurisdictions.
The legal challenge is anticipating every dispute that could arise over the next 25–30 years and baking in mechanisms that will still work when today’s ministers, boards and financiers have long moved on.
The lawyers behind the transaction
On the New Zealand side, Bell Gully’s team was led by commercial infrastructure partner Angela Harford, (pictured above) construction and projects partner Ian Becke and PPP/public law partner Kirsty Dobbs, supported by senior associate Ruth Keats and Bell Gully’s broader infrastructure team. The firm has advised the Crown on nine of the ten PPP projects undertaken in New Zealand.
The Ashurst Perkins Coie team was led from Australia by partner Angus Foley, assisted by projects partners Jennifer Ingram and Krista Payne and senior associate Alice Dawson in the firm’s Projects, Energy, Environment & Resources group.
Those lawyers have extensive experience advising governments, lenders and project sponsors on major transport infrastructure and project finance transactions across Australia and internationally. Becke’s own prior practice at Ashurst in Sydney added another layer of cross‑Tasman familiarity to the advisory team.
A different scale of law firm
The firm’s presence on the deal also reflects a changing legal market. Perkins Coie and Ashurst have announced a landmark transatlantic tie‑up to create Ashurst Perkins Coie, a top‑20 global law firm by revenue with more than 3,000 lawyers across 50‑plus offices and annual revenues of around US$2.7 billion. The combined firm is explicitly focused on technology, energy and infrastructure, and financial services – the sectors that dominate PPP and project finance work.
More than a motorway
For Bell Gully, the mandate reinforces its status as a Tier 1 New Zealand practice for infrastructure and public law, and as the Crown’s go‑to adviser on complex PPP structures. For Ashurst Perkins Coie, it shows the firm’s ability to deploy dedicated infrastructure specialists across multiple jurisdictions on government projects of this scale.
It also illustrates how New Zealand’s largest infrastructure procurements increasingly replicate global financial transactions rather than traditional construction projects.
