India’s Larsen & Toubro Ltd. (L&T) said its Energy Hydrocarbon unit has won a contract for the fabrication and supply of process and piperack modules for Perdaman Chemicals and Fertilisers Pty Ltd.’s 2.3 million mt/y granular urea plant under construction in Western Australia.
Italian companies Saipem SpA and Webuild Group SpA, the Engineering, Procurement, and Construction (EPC) contractors for the Perdaman project, awarded the contract for the supply of about 50,000 mt of modules to be delivered over 32 months to the project site on the Burrup Peninsula, some 20 km north of Karratha.
The modules will be fabricated at L&T’s Kattupalli Modular Fabrication plant in Tamil Nadu state and will be shipped fully tested, pre-commissioned, and ready to install, L&T said in an Aug. 21 statement. L&T said the order is worth Rs10-25 billion (approximately $120.4-$301 million at current exchange rates) and “comes amid stiff competition from Chinese companies.”
Another of L&T’s business units, L&T Heavy Engineering, has secured multiple orders for the complete package of urea equipment for the Perdaman project, consisting of urea reactors, carbamate separators, carbamate condensers, and urea strippers, which will be delivered progressively over 25 months.
Perdaman broke ground on the long-planned urea project on April 26 (GM April 28, p. 1) following the company finally achieving financial close for the A$6 billion project (approximately US$3.86 billion at current exchange rates), which the junior producer expects to be commissioned in mid-2027 (GM April 21, p. 1).
The plant will provide Australia’s Incitec Pivot Fertilisers Ltd. (IPF) with a secure, long-term supply of domestically produced urea. IPF confirmed the previously announced (GM May 7, 2021) 20-year offtake agreement of 2.3 million mt/y of granular urea from the Perdaman plant on its commissioning.
Australia is now 100% import dependent for urea since IPF, which was Australia’s sole urea producer, ceased production at its only urea plant at Gibson Island, Brisbane, at the end of last year. The Australian producer had been unable to secure “an economically viable” long-term gas supply to its plant beyond the prevailing supply contract. Gibson Island had urea production capacity of 340,000 mt/y, according to the Green Markets database.