OCI NV, Amsterdam, this week announced that its Fertiglobe joint venture has agreed with a KBR Inc.-led consortium, which includes Japan’s Mitsubishi, JGC and Itochu, to buy their combined 15 percent stake in Egypt Basic Industries Corp. (EBIC) for a total consideration of $43 million. This brings Fertiglobe’s stake in EBIC to 75 percent, further streamlining the group’s ownership structure, OCI said.
EBIC consists of one 748,000 mt/y capacity ammonia line located in Ain Sokhna. The plant has direct pipeline connections to Sokhna port, one of the region’s largest export jetties on the Red Sea.
EBIC was constructed by OCI in partnership with KBR and uses KBR Advanced Ammonia Process (KAAP) technology. Construction of the plant was completed in 2009.
Most recently, EBIC began developing Egypt’s first green ammonia pilot project, for which KBR conducted an engineering study, OCI said in its Aug. 2 statement announcing the KBR consortium stake acquisition. The project will use “attractively priced” wind/solar energy.
This EBIC facility is well-positioned for the energy transition, given that is the only world-scale dedicated ammonia export plant, OCI NV Group CFO Hassan Badrawi told analysts at a company earnings call on Aug. 2.
Responding to an analyst’s question, Badrawi confirmed the residual shareholders in EBIC are a combination of private investors and Egyptian state-owned gas provider EGAS.
Fertiglobe is a joint venture with Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. (ADNOC), established in September 2019, and combines ADNOC’s fertilizer business into OCI’s Middle East and North Africa (MENA) nitrogen fertilizer platform (GM Oct. 4, 2019). OCI holds a 58 percent stake and ADNOC a 42 percent stake in the jv, which has a total production capacity of 5 million mt/y of urea and 1.5 million mt/y of merchant ammonia.