Nineteen months after its Victorian arm went into administration, Roberts Co has a Gulf head office, a Gold Coast tower job and a developer for a parent. For the trades who work under it, the ownership matters more than the new address.
Roberts Co, the Sydney tier one contractor bought by UAE master developer Arada in 2025, has set up in the United Arab Emirates.
Its first job there is the second phase of Arada Central Business District, a commercial hub inside Aljada, the mixed use community Arada values at AED35 billion in Sharjah. Roberts Co is also doing preconstruction work on several other Arada projects in Dubai and Sharjah before it mobilises on site.
On the surface, that is a story about an Australian builder going offshore. Underneath, it is a story about a model that is now operating on the Gold Coast too. The developer owns the builder.
What exactly did Arada announce?
Arada says Roberts Co now has a UAE presence with a head office team in place. The move sits inside Arada Industries, the arm through which the group has brought construction, cranes, mechanical and electrical services and smart technology in house.
With its own contractor inside the business, Arada says it can bring construction thinking in at the design stage and gain more control over cost, quality and program.
Arada has also said Roberts Co will sit alongside the outside contractors it already uses on its UAE projects, rather than replace them. The announcement does not say how many of the UAE team have moved from Australia.
How did Roberts Co end up owned by a developer?
Roberts Co was founded in 2017 and grew into a tier one commercial builder working across health, education, residential, commercial, industrial, life sciences and defence.
Its Victorian business did not survive the post pandemic cost squeeze. Administrators were appointed to Roberts Co (VIC) on 14 March 2025. On 9 May 2025, separate administrators were appointed to the group’s head company and several related entities. That appointment did not extend to the NSW business.
The NSW business is what Arada bought. In May 2025 the developer announced a $20 million recapitalisation of Roberts Co (NSW), which it said secured 120 direct jobs and gave stability to around 600 more across the Sydney supply chain. It also set a revenue target of $1 billion by 2028.
In October 2025, Arada said its capital injection had reached $50 million, with Queensland, including Brisbane and the Gold Coast, named as the next market.
That plan now has a site. In August 2026 Arada revealed a twin tower project in Broadbeach, valued at AED5 billion, or about $2 billion. It comprises 952 residences, with completion targeted before the 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Roberts Co is the builder.
What happened to subcontractors when the Victorian arm failed?
When administrators were appointed, the company’s records showed about 470 creditors with claims of roughly $272 million, including about $21.3 million in subcontractor claims, according to a Federal Court decision in May 2025.
That decision turned on retention money. Roberts Co had taken over six Melbourne projects from the collapsed Probuild in 2022. For those jobs it opened a dedicated retention account and told the subcontractors their retentions would be held on trust.
The court found the administrators were justified in treating close to $3.9 million in that account as trust money for those subcontractors, to be paid out under their subcontracts rather than shared among all creditors.
On Roberts Co’s other Victorian projects, retention money was not set aside. Those subcontractors had no equivalent segregated account to point to.
Same company. Same collapse. Two very different outcomes, decided largely by whether the money had been kept separate.
Roberts Co (VIC) is now subject to a deed of company arrangement, according to its administrators.
What changes when the developer owns the builder?
On a conventional project, the developer and the head contractor sit on opposite sides of the table. They negotiate price, argue variations and fight over who wears cost movements. Subcontractors sit beneath that tension.
Same company. Same collapse. Two very different outcomes, decided largely by whether the money had been kept separate.
When both sit in one group, that negotiation happens inside the same company. Arada’s position, stated when it announced Broadbeach, is that building through its own contractor gives it more control over quality, pace and accountability.
There is a reasonable case for it. Fixed price contracts signed with third party developers before costs rose sit behind many recent head contractor failures. An in house builder has a parent with every reason to keep it standing until the project is finished.
There is also a case for caution. When the developer and the builder share an owner, trouble on the development side and trouble on site are no longer separate risks. We have looked at what builders face when a developer goes under. In a vertically integrated group, the developer and the head contractor are on the same side of that line.
For subcontractors, the counterparty on paper does not change. The subcontract is still with the building company, and payment rights still run through state security of payment legislation, which differs by jurisdiction.
What the model does change is who stands behind the builder, and how closely its fortunes are tied to one developer’s pipeline.
What is vertical integration in construction?
Vertical integration is when one business owns several stages of the chain it relies on. In property it usually means a developer owning its own construction company, or a builder owning suppliers and manufacturers. The aim is more control over cost, quality and timing. The trade off is that the risks of each stage are concentrated in one group.
Why is an Australian builder heading to the Gulf?
For Arada, the answer is capability it controls. It has a large UAE pipeline of high rise residential and social infrastructure projects and wants a delivery arm inside the group.
We recently looked at builders taking ownership of their supply chain rather than buying from it. Arada is running the same logic at a much larger scale.
For Australia, the more interesting question is what happens at home. Roberts Co is now growing in Sydney, the Gold Coast and the UAE at once, in a national construction market that is still short of trades and experienced site management.
What will Gold Coast trades be pricing into?
Broadbeach is Arada’s first project outside NSW. A 952 residence job is a long program for structure, facade, services and finishing trades.
Trades pricing that work will be dealing with a builder that has been recapitalised, has a well resourced parent with a clear delivery motive, and carries a recent history in which retention protection depended on how the money was held.
Where the job sits, and which rules govern retention money in that state, will shape the exposure as much as who owns the builder.
Is the ownership structure the real story?
The UAE office makes the headline. The structure is the story.
Roberts Co is no longer a stand alone contractor chasing work from third party developers. It is the construction arm of a developer with projects across the UAE, the United Kingdom and Australia. That gives it backing it did not have in early 2025.
The real test will not be in Sharjah. It will be on the Gold Coast, the first time a serious cost movement lands on a job where the developer and the builder answer to the same owner.
We will keep watching. If you are working on Arada or Roberts Co sites, or pricing work for them, we want to hear how it is going. Get in touch, and catch more conversations like this on The Good Builder Podcast.
Frequently asked questions
Roberts Co is owned by Arada, a UAE based master developer. Arada acquired the NSW business of Roberts Co in May 2025, after the group’s Victorian arm went into administration in March 2025. Arada has since said its total capital injection into Roberts Co’s Australian balance sheet reached $50 million.
Roberts Co’s first UAE project is the second phase of Arada Central Business District, a commercial hub within Arada’s Aljada community in Sharjah. It is also providing preconstruction services on several other Arada projects in Dubai and Sharjah.
Yes. Roberts Co is the builder for Arada’s Broadbeach twin tower project on the Gold Coast, which Arada says will include 952 residences and is targeted for completion before the 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games. It is Arada’s first project outside NSW.
The Federal Court found in May 2025 that administrators were justified in treating close to $3.9 million in a dedicated retention account as held on trust for subcontractors on six projects Roberts Co took over from Probuild. Retention money on the company’s other Victorian projects had not been set aside in the same way.
A developer owned builder is a construction company owned by the developer whose projects it builds. The developer argues it gains control over cost, quality and program. The trade off is that development risk and construction risk sit within one group rather than with two separate businesses.
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General Information Only: This article is intended for general informational purposes and does not constitute legal or financial advice. The Good Builder is not a law firm or a licensed financial adviser. Readers should seek appropriate professional guidance before acting on any information contained herein.
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