Letter of intent signed for QAFCO-5 expansion

DUBAI (ICIS news)–Qatar Fertilizer Co (Qafco), a subsidiary of Industries Qatar, on Sunday said it has signed a letter of intent with a consortium led by Italy’s Snamprogetti and South Korea’s Hyundai for the construction of the QAFCO-5 expansion project.

Costing a total of around $3.2bn (€2.2bn), the facilities to be constructed include two ammonia plants with a daily production capacity of 2,300/tonnes each and a urea plant with daily production capacity of 3,850/tonnes, along with other support utilities, it said.

Upon completion, the plant is set to bring Qafco’s annual production capacity of ammonia by 73% to around 3.8m tonnes, that of urea by 43% to 4.3m tonnes, making the company the world’s largest single site producer of both ammonia and urea. 

Work is scheduled to start in January 2008, after signing the project construction agreement.  Construction works will take 38 months and the completed project is expected to be taken over by Qafco in January 2011.

The project is due to start commercial production some months some months ahead of the handover, the company said. 

Bids to finance the project will be invited on 22 November. Qafco expects name the selected banks by end-November.

($1 = €0.68)