Riverlee has kicked off construction of its $550 million Seafarers mixed-use project in Melbourneafter waiting a year to see out the worst of the rise in material and labour costs caused by global and local supply chain constraints.

The developer, which has made $140 million to date in sales – more than half of the available stock – of the 120 luxury apartments in the building in the Yarra River’s so-called Northbank precinct, could have appointed a builder earlier but chose to wait until there was more certainty around rising construction costs, development director David Lee said.