Saudi Arabia Mining Co. (Ma’aden), Riyadh, has completed construction of the utility section on its new 1.1 million mt/y ammonia plant in Ras Al-Khair Industrial City on Saudi Arabia’s East Coast and pre-commissioning activities on the utilities have begun, the company said in a June 13 statement.
Ma’aden expects construction completion in the fourth quarter of 2021, with “full activation” in the first quarter of 2022. This is in line with the company’s previously reported project timeline (GM May 7, p. 39; Feb. 12, p. 37).
“The ammonia plant expansion will add over 1 million mt/y of ammonia production, [taking our] ammonia production capacity to 3.3 million mt/y, making Ma’aden one of the largest ammonia producers east of the Suez Canal,” said Ma’aden CEO Abdulaziz Al Harbi.
The Ammonia-3 plant has taken 32 months to build, and is located adjacent to the Ma’aden Phosphate Co. and Ma’aden Wa’ad Al Shamal Phosphate Co. (MWSPC) DAP/MAP plants and their associated facilities (GM Oct. 26, 2018).
According to this week’s company statement, the new facility has cost a total of $900 million. In its first-quarter earnings report on May 4, Ma’aden had put the total budget for Ammonia-3 at $1.113 billion.
Ammonia-3 is the first unit under construction as part of Ma’aden’s ambitious plans for a third large-scale phosphate complex, “Phosphate 3,” which upon completion will add a further 3 million mt/y of phosphate fertilizer production capacity to Ma’aden’s portfolio.
However, ammonia from Ammonia-3 looks likely to be sold initially on the market. In February, local media, citing Ma’aden, reported output from the new plant would add 1.1 million mt to the Saudi producer’s sales. However, this could not be confirmed with Ma’aden by Green Markets.
Ma’aden in this week’s statement provided no update on the timeline for the completion of the Phosphate 3 project, although the company did indicate the cost of the project at $6.4 billion.
This is a significant increase on the company’s previous project cost estimate of $4.219 billion, an estimate confirmed by Ma’aden as the budgeted cost for “the entire Phosphate 3 project” as recently as early May in the company’s first-quarter earnings report.
In February, Ma’aden’s then CEO Mosaed bin Suliman Al Ohali confirmed to analysts that the company was looking at developing Phosphate 3 in two phases: Phase 1, half of the capacity, 1.5 million mt/y, and then another phase of 1.5 million mt/y.
Ma’aden in its first-quarter earnings report on May 4 indicated it was targeting completion of Phase 1 in 2025, but provided no details on what Phase 1 comprised or on any work in progress.