South Korea’s Daewoo Engineering and Construction Co. has secured a Won342.7 billion (approximately $262 million at current exchange rates) order to build another ammonia and urea complex in Nigeria for Indorama Eleme Fertiliser and Chemicals Ltd. (IEFCL) through a local subsidiary, according to South Korean news agency Yonhap.
The new facility is to be built at Port Harcourt and will be IEFCL’s third ammonia and urea plant in Nigeria. It will be built adjacent to IEFCL’s two existing plants, which have a combined granular urea production capacity of 2.8 million mt/y.
According to Yonhap, the new plant will take 35 months to complete. Daewoo, which built IEFCL’s two earlier plants in Nigeria, has not disclosed the capacities of the new facility.
IEFCL is a fully owned subsidiary of the Singapore-based Indorama Group, after the group in January acquired the remaining 15% of the company (GM Jan. 20, p. 27). The seller was reported to be UK-based Actis Capital.
Nigeria has two other urea producers. Dangote Fertiliser Ltd. has nameplate capacity of 3 million mt/y at its plant in the country’s Lekki Free Trade Zone, about 50 km east of central Lagos, which started up in the first half of 2021 (GM June 11, 2021). Notore Chemical Industries Plc also operates a plant with nameplate capacity of around 500,000 mt/y at Omne near Port Harcourt.
As new production capacity comes onstream and current urea domestic demand is reported at less than 1 million mt/y, Nigeria’s urea exports have grown exponentially in recent years, reaching 2.86 million mt in 2022, up from 1.07 million mt in 2021 and 442,293 mt in 2020, according to Trade Data Monitor. Exports for January-March 2023 totaled 730,042 mt.