Orascom Construction Industries (OCI) announced today that its wholly owned subsidiary Iowa Fertilizer Co. (IFCo) has awarded the OCI Construction Group a turnkey engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract to build its new greenfield nitrogen fertilizer plant in southeastern Iowa. The total contract value is expected to exceed US$ 1 billion. Under the terms of the EPC contract, the new plant will utilize proven state-of-the-art production process technologies from Kellogg Brown and Root LLC (KBR), Stamicarbon BV (Maire Tecnimont Group) and ThyssenKrupp Uhde (Uhde) to produce between 1.5-2 million mt/y of ammonia, urea, urea ammonium nitrate (UAN) as well as diesel exhaust fluid (DEF). Tecnimont S.p.A. (Maire Tecnimont Group) will provide engineering and procurement (EP) services for the ammonia line while Uhde will provide EP services for the urea, UAN and DEF lines. Construction work on the plant is expected to be completed in 35 months.
While OCI did not reveal the site of the new nitrogen plant in its press release, locals have indicated it would be in Lee County, near Wever. A previous Lee County site had been pulled due to flooding concerns.
OCI said its OCI Construction Group ranks among the world’s top global contractors and has built several nitrogen fertilizer plants in the Middle East. The OCI Construction Group has had a long standing relationship and successful track-record working with KBR, Marie Tecnimont Group and Uhde on various projects, including four nitrogen fertilizer plants in Egypt and Algeria with a combined value exceeding US$ 3 billion. The OCI Construction Group is currently building a nitrogen fertilizer plant in Egypt in cooperation with Marie Tecnimont Group and KBR.
OCI Construction Group Chief Operating Officer, Osama Bishai, commented “the OCI Construction Group will draw upon its experience and expertise in building similar facilities and will also leverage its US construction platform which now includes the Weitz Co. to fast-track the construction of this project. We have worked well with Maire Tecnimont Group and Uhde on several projects and believe our performance on this project will be a landmark reference for us to grow our business in North America.”
Maire Tecnimont Group Chief Operating Officer, Pierroberto Folgiero, commented “we are very proud to cooperate again with an important and prestigious group such as OCI. This award represents the first recent success of the Maire Tecnimont Group in North America, a very promising market in the future. This contract opens up new growth opportunities in North America for our Group and consolidates our track record in the strategic fertilizer sector.”
Chairman of the Executive Board of ThyssenKrupp Uhde, Dr. Michael Thiemann commented ”the fertilizer contract in Iowa is the next chapter in our success story with OCI, which, after Egypt and Algeria, has now taken us to the United States. We are looking forward to nurturing our long-standing relationship with OCI by working closely on this project.”
In related news, as noted above, OCI also announced that it will acquire The Weitz Co., a U.S. general contractor based in Des Moines, Iowa. Weitz has three core business lines: commercial, federal, and industrial construction, and has typically ranked among the top 50 in Engineering News Record’s (ENR) Top 400 Contractors list and is the largest contractor in the state of Iowa. The company generated US$ 681.5 million of revenue in 2011 and prior to the recent economic downturn generated revenues in excess of US$ 1.5 billion. Weitz had a backlog of US$ 787.7 million as at 30 June 2012 with federal projects representing 51 percent, commercial projects 36 percent and industrial projects 13 percent of backlog. All of Weitz’s current management and employees will be retained following the acquisition.
OCI said t