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  Fertiglobe begins next growth chapter in Abu Dhabi

  23 December 2024

  

   

  The majority acquisition of ammonia-based fertilisers producer Fertiglobe by Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc Group) could be an inflection point in its growth story, CEO Ahmed El-Hoshy says.

  Fertiglobe is already the world’s largest seaborne exporter of urea and ammonia combined, exporting to 53 countries with a collective market share of about 10% of global trade.

  Moreover, the company has invested about $500m, along with South Korea’s GS Energy Corporation and Japanese investment firm Mitsui & Company, to build a blue ammonia production facility in the Taziz Industrial Chemicals Zone in Abu Dhabi’s Ruwais, with a production capacity of 1 million tonnes a year (t/y).

  “Adnoc is thinking about the future. Not just the immediate future, but medium to long term, in line with the move by Dr Sultan [Al-Jaber; group CEO and managing director of Adnoc] to future-proof the business,” El-Hoshy says. 

  “So, when you are looking at a molecule like ammonia – where we’re a global leader, and are selling into some of the key markets – it’s a really good meeting of a big integrated energy company that reaches all over the world in traditional energy sales with an existing incumbent in the ammonia space that is operating in it today,” he says. 

  “[The process is] not starting from scratch, but you’re starting from existing operations and expanding from there,” El-Hoshy tells MEED.

  Adnoc, in a transaction completed in October, increased its shareholding in Fertiglobe to 86.2% through the acquisition of 50% + 1 share held by Netherlands-based OCI Global, which is backed by Egyptian billionaire Nassef Sawiris. The Abu Dhabi energy giant previously held a 36.2% stake in Fertiglobe.

  The remaining 13.8% of Fertiglobe’s shares trade on the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange, following the company’s stock listing in October 2022.

  “I was previously at OCI for 15 years. Growing that business in the US and Europe is what I struggled with a little bit, because OCI was not a household name, like Adnoc is. To be able to go into Japan and South Korea, to the big power generators and utilities, to the governments in Europe, and having this long, far-reaching ability with Adnoc really can accelerate that,” the CEO says.

  Fertiglobe is also studying the prospect of investing in another blue ammonia production facility in Abu Dhabi 

  Ruwais project

  In February 2023, the Fertiglobe-led joint venture awarded Italian firm Tecnimont the main contract for executing the engineering, procurement and construction works on the Taziz blue ammonia project.

  El-Hoshy says construction work on the project is under way, with piling works ongoing and some of the civil foundation works to take place over the next six months. He expects the blue ammonia complex to enter operations in 2027. 

  “We own 30% of the project currently. Mitsui and GS Energy own 10% stakes each. Adnoc, via Taziz, [Abu Dhabi’s industrial holding company] ADQ and some local shareholders own the remaining 50%. But Fertiglobe has now become the low-carbon ammonia vehicle for Adnoc. “So today we are at 30% in the project, and Adnoc is covering the costs till the project becomes operational. Once the project is commissioned, we will be able to acquire, at cost, almost double that of our stake today. Almost 55% that is,” the CEO says.

  “To give you a sense, a project like this in the US would comfortably cost north of $1.2-$1.3bn. So that’s a big advantage on the capex side. Also, from the logistics perspective, being able to get to Asia is a huge advantage, versus in the US through the Panama Canal and all the way across the Pacific,” El-Hoshy says of the capex investment in the project. 

  “So, there are a lot of key advantages here, obviously with the support of government and regulatory regime and the availability of renewable electricity here, whether it’s nuclear or solar or otherwise.

  “Also, being able to share infrastructure in the broader Ruwais area in Abu Dhabi is another big advantage. We’re going to be using shared infrastructure for storage, for exports and for power utilities,” he says.

  Second investment

  Fertiglobe is also studying the prospect of investing in another blue ammonia production facility in Abu Dhabi, which could also be located within the Taziz industrial complex.

  “Outside the one with GS and Mitsui, there’s another 1 million-t/y blue ammonia project that is pre-final investment decision that we’re doing [the] engineering [study] on. It’s called the Rabdan project,” he reveals.

  “Adnoc/Fertiglobe is the sole developer of the Rabdan project. But we are going to bring in partners. The project will be handed over to Fertiglobe at cost and operations. But we are involved right from the start in commercialising and developing it,” the CEO says. 

  El-Hoshy adds that Fertiglobe will not wait until the commissioning of the first blue ammonia project to make progress on the Rabdan project, and that work on both projects could proceed in parallel.

  “We’ve done quite a bit of engineering work, some of it in-house. We we’re still in the [front-end engineering and design] feed stage now, but we’re yet to award any feed contract,” El-Hoshy says.

  “Depending upon what the offtakes [agreements with potential customers] look like, we will be able to decide when to pull the trigger on the second [Rabdan] project,” he adds. 

  The two projects in Abu Dhabi could add 2 million t/y of output potential, more than doubling Fertiglobe’s current commercial ammonia capacity of 1.6 million t/y and increasing its total sellable capacity to 8.6 million t/y of net ammonia and urea combined, in addition to other announced global projects.

  Blue vs green ammonia

  Fertiglobe is today, perhaps, one of the only companies in the world that has investments or stakes in both blue and green hydrogen/ammonia production. The company is also involved in a green ammonia project in Egypt, where it signed a 20-year ammonia offtake agreement with Egypt Green Hydrogen in July this year. Fertiglobe will supply the renewable ammonia to Germany’s Hydrogen Intermediary Network Company (Hint.co) following an offtake agreement between the two companies in August.

  The signing of the offtake agreement with Hint.co came after Fertiglobe’s successful bid in the first tender by H2Global Foundation to supply green hydrogen-derived ammonia from Egypt to Europe.

  “I'd say there is demand for both forms of ammonia right now. But I think when carbon has a price globally, like the carbon border adjusting mechanism in Europe that starts in 2026, you'll start seeing that blue will get the premium over time as that [EU tax] gets implemented. And blue definitely, in terms affordability, is much cheaper than green. So, I say, definitely blue kind of eats green's lunch,” El-Hoshy says.

  “Green has technology risk. By technology risk I mean that, you might build all this and then the electrolysers don't work, or you have degradation, or they are up and down. They're very tough to operate, they're very temperamental and they haven't been proven over long periods of time,” he says. 

  “And lastly, the EU carbon border tax just focuses on scope 1 and scope 2 emissions, and not scope 3. Scope 1 and 2 emissions for a blue plant, if done in the right way – where you use renewable electricity instead of regular electricity, and you capture over 99% of the CO2, which we intend to do with our blue projects – can be almost identical for a green molecule as a blue,” El-Hoshy says.

  “So you think about me producing a much cheaper blue [molecule] without the technology risk and the headache, and I get the same carbon charge as green … that makes a lot more sense.”

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  Indrajit Sen
• 
  Bigger is better for construction

  23 December 2024

  

   

  Nothing encapsulates a buoyant construction market better than signing a contract to complete the world’s tallest tower. That happened on 2 October 2024, when Saudi Binladin Group (SBG) was awarded a $2bn contract to complete the 1,000-metre-plus Jeddah Tower.

  The award was significant in many ways. It was a revival of the tower project, which has been on hold since 2018, and it was also a comeback for SBG after years of financial stress that had led many in the market to think it would never win another major construction deal.

  On a macro level, the construction deal confirmed that the region is home to the world’s most daring and challenging construction projects.

  More importantly, these projects are more than just aspirations; they are real projects that are being built.

  Biggest contracts

  While Jeddah Tower was the most symbolic contract award in 2024, at $2bn, it was not the largest. That accolade went to the Italian contractor WeBuild when it was awarded a $4.7bn contract for the construction of the three dams at the Trojena mountain resort at Neom in January. 

  Like Jeddah Tower, the project is a challenging one. Time pressure is a key issue. Trojena has been selected to host the 2029 Asian Winter Games, and the reservoir will be used to make the snow for the event. This means the dams must be completed and the reservoir filled well in advance.  

  The project is also technically complex. The main dam will have a height of 145 metres and will be 475 metres long at its crest. Inside the reservoir there will be a kidney-shaped dam that will house an attraction known as the Enchanted Forest, which will be connected to the rest of the Trojena development by an underwater tunnel.

  WeBuild’s involvement also highlighted that international contractors, after sitting on the sidelines for a number of years, are playing an active role in the Saudi construction market. 

  One market segment that has attracted strong interest is building stadiums, which like Trojena have to be completed for football tournaments with fixed dates: the 2027 Asian Games and the 2034 Fifa World Cup. 

  In October, Spain’s FCC in joint venture with the local Nesma & Partners secured a $1bn contract to build the Prince Mohammed Bin Salman Stadium at the Qiddiya City development on the outskirts of Riyadh.

  Earlier in the year, a joint venture of Belgian contractor Besix and the local Albawani was awarded the contract to build the Aramco football stadium in Al-Khobar, and Beijing-headquartered China Railway Construction Corporation and local contractor Sama Construction for Trading & Contracting won the contract to construct the Jeddah Central stadium project.

  Outside of Saudi Arabia, there were only two contract awards valued at over $1bn and both were in the UAE emirate of Abu Dhabi. 

  In January, a $1.2bn contract to complete phases two and four at the Saadiyat Lagoons project was awarded to a joint venture of two Abu Dhabi-based contractors, Trojan Construction Group and Arabian Construction Company. 

  The other $1bn-plus deal was a $1.4bn contract to complete dredging and marine works for the Nisi Island development, which was awarded to the local NMDC Group. 

  These deals were highlights in what was a strong year for the rest of the market. In total, according to regional projects tracker MEED Projects, there were $67.9bn of construction contract awards by the end of October 2024. If the trajectory is maintained until the end of the year, it will result in about $81.4bn of awards, which is lower than the $96.9bn of awards recorded in 2023, but still higher than any of the eight years from 2015 to 2022. 

  Market challenges

  Replicating the record-breaking performance of 2023 was never going to be easy, especially after Riyadh warned that its spending would be more targeted at the end of 2023. Those comments, made by the finance minister, set the tone for 2024, which proved to be a year with plenty of contract awards, but without the apparent carefree attitude to spending that characterised 2023. 

  The other challenge with following on from a bumper year is supply chain constraints. With full order books, contractors and suppliers have lost some of the appetite that they had for new work in 2023. The result of this for project clients has been difficulties in attracting enough bidders, and when bids are submitted, the offers are often not competitively priced.

  These challenges have been felt most acutely by projects in the remote regions of Saudi Arabia. The issue is so prevalent at Neom that there is now a phenomenon known as ‘Neom inflation’, which implies that the $500bn gigaproject in the remote northwestern corner of the kingdom has its own unique inflation rate.

  These regional issues have added to the international supply chain constraints that have been felt since the Covid-19 pandemic and, more recently, during the conflict in Gaza and threats to shipping lanes in the Red Sea.

  Addressing challenges

  The market has responded to these challenges. In Saudi Arabia, the Public Investment Fund (PIF) invested in four of the kingdom’s largest general contractors in 2023. Then, in February 2024, the sovereign wealth vehicle announced that it had, together with the National Infrastructure Fund, introduced a new contractor financing programme, designed to strengthen the construction sector’s finances. 

  The programme aims to provide contractors with finance solutions to help improve their cash flows.

  Developers have also been improving their contract terms and, crucially, working to ensure payments are processed on time – a move that should also help improve contractor cash flows. 

  The PIF-backed development companies have also been actively working on attracting new companies to Saudi Arabia. They have been travelling the world on roadshows to attract more contractors and suppliers to projects in the kingdom. 

  These roadshows have been highlighting the volume and scale of the opportunities in Saudi Arabia, and have shown that the kingdom offers long-term opportunities for companies that come and invest in the market. 

  In the UAE, Abu Dhabi has invested heavily in its construction supply chain. With its government-controlled investment vehicles and a series of interconnected mergers and acquisitions, Abu Dhabi and its ruling family now own the emirate’s key contracting companies and the suppliers of vital raw materials such as cement and steel. 

  These national champions shield Abu Dhabi from many, but not all, supply chain challenges that have impacted projects in other markets.

  Meanwhile, in Dubai, where the real estate market is driving construction, private sector developers are courting contractors to work on their projects.

  As private entities, they are not bound by the procurement regulations that government or government-controlled developers have, so they have been offering directly negotiated deals to help guarantee that their projects are delivered on time.

   

  2025 outlook

  Unless the market dynamics shift dramatically, the market will likely face many of the same challenges in 2025. 

  One of the overriding fears is a sharp slowdown in project spending in Saudi Arabia. This has happened before and is a valid concern, and the market has already shown signs of plateauing in some areas. 

  This is most noticeable when contract awards for the five official gigaprojects – Diriyah, Neom, Qiddiya, Red Sea Global and Roshn –  are examined. After a sharp ramp-up in awards from 2020 to 2023, the pace of contract awards levelled off in 2024, which reflects budgetary concerns within the development companies and the PIF, and the market’s ability to take on such large volumes of new work. 

  With budgets under pressure, developers in Saudi Arabia are increasingly looking for investment to help fund their projects. The success of these efforts will determine how buoyant the market in the kingdom remains over the long term.  

  Even if investment comes in, it will take time, which means there will likely be a degree of conservatism from development companies in 2025. This was signalled in mid-November, when Neom, while announcing the exit of CEO Nadhmi Al-Nasr and the appointment of Aiman Al-Mudaifer as acting CEO, said: “As Neom enters a new phase of delivery, this new leadership will ensure operational continuity, agility and efficiency to match the overall vision and objectives of the project.”

  While there may be a pause in spending on some of the Saudi gigaprojects, other schemes continue to underpin the performance of the construction market. 

  Oil prices remain supportive of government spending on projects across the Gulf, and for the private sector, in markets such as the UAE, real estate projects continue to move into construction as developers rush to deliver units to investors and capitalise on the ongoing strength of the property market. 

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  Colin Foreman
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  Bahrain moves Sitra IWPP prequalifications

  20 December 2024

  Bahrain’s Electricity & Water Authority (EWA) has moved the last day for interested companies to submit their statements of qualifications (SOQs) for a contract to develop the state’s fourth independent water and power project (IWPP).

  The Sitra IWPP is a combined-cycle gas turbine (CCGT) plant, which is expected to have a production capacity of about 1,200MW of electricity. The project’s seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) desalination facility will have a production capacity of 30 million imperial gallons a day (MIGD) of potable water.

  According to industry sources, EWA moved the last day for SOQ submissions from 11 to 25 December.

  The integrated plant replaces the previously planned Al-Dur 3 IWPP. It is expected to be fully operational by the second quarter of 2029.

  It will be developed on a brownfield site and strategically located in Sitra “to ensure resource efficiency and service delivery”. It is expected to be fully operational by the second quarter of 2029.

  MEED previously reported that the client intends to float the tender for the Sitra IWPP to prequalified utility developers by May 2025. 

  The state utility is procuring Bahrain’s first independent water project (IWP) in Al-Hidd along with the Sitra IWPP.

  The Al-Hidd SWRO plant is expected to have a production capacity of about 60 MIGD of potable water.

  The two BOO projects will be procured under a public-private partnership framework for 20-25 years.

  Sixty representatives from utility developers and contracting firms attended a market-sounding event for the two separate utility build, own and operate (BOO) projects in Manama on 21 October.

  The firms that sent representatives to the event in Manama include France’s Engie, Japan’s Mitsui, Saudi Arabia’s Acwa Power, AlJomaih Electricity & Water Company and Ajlan & Bros, and Kuwait’s Gulf Investment Corporation, among others, said sources.

  EWA’s transaction advisory team comprises KPMG Fakhro as the financial consultant, WSP Parsons Brinckerhoff as the technical consultant and Trowers & Hamlins as the legal consultant.

  Bahrain’s first three IWPPs are Al-Dur 1, Al-Hidd and Al-Dur 2.

  MEED understands that EWA’s Sitra IWPP will likely be Bahrain’s last CCGT plant project. Solar power is expected to account for all future electricity generation capacity.

  Bahrain aims to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2060.

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  Jennifer Aguinaldo
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  Taqa to award Dhafra open-cycle gas power plant contract

  20 December 2024

  

   

  Abu Dhabi National Energy Company (Taqa) is expected to imminently award a contract to build an open-cycle gas turbine (OCGT) power generation plant project in Abu Dhabi.

  The Al-Dhafra OCGT plant is being tendered on a fast-track basis and is expected to have an installed capacity of between 1,000MW and 1,100MW.

  “We expect news of an award perhaps next week,” a source close to the tender proceedings tells MEED.  

  Engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contractors are understood to have submitted their proposals for the contract in late September.

  MEED reported in the same month that Taqa plans to procure an estimated 5,000MW of gas-fired power plant capacity, mainly to support the UAE’s artificial intelligence (AI) strategy.

  In addition to Al-Dhafra, sources said a second site is being considered for the projects in Al-Nouf.

  Earlier this month, MEED reported that Abu Dhabi state utility and offtaker Emirates Water & Electricity Company (Ewec) is working with both Taqa and Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company (Masdar) to implement the power plant projects that support the UAE capital’s AI strategy.

  According to an industry source, the planned Al-Dhafra OCGT power generation plant is designed to provide backup power to the round-the-clock (RTC) solar independent power project (IPP) that Masdar is developing.

  Related read: Region plays high-stakes AI game

  The solar IPP capacity being considered is about 5,000MW, and the battery energy storage system (bess) is approximately 20 gigawatt-hours. This would enable approximately 1,000MW of RTC or 24×7 power between April and October of every year, industry sources tell MEED.

  One of the sources said these fast-track projects comprise the AI strategy’s first phase, with Ewec planning to publicly tender the succeeding phase or phases of the project.

  The UAE National Artificial Intelligence Strategy 2031 has set eight strategic objectives, including building a reputation as an AI destination, deploying AI in priority sectors, attracting AI talent and ensuring strong governance and effective regulation.

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  Jennifer Aguinaldo
• 
  Acwa Power applies for $1.9bn capital increase

  20 December 2024

  Saudi utility developer and investor Acwa Power has submitted its application to raise additional capital to the kingdom’s Capital Market Authority (CMA).

  The move aligns with the Acwa Power board’s previous recommendation to increase its capital through offering rights issue shares for a total offering value of SR7.125m ($1.9bn), the company said in a regulatory filing on 19 December.

  The capital injection is expected to support Acwa Power’s ongoing investments in renewable energy infrastructure and help the company scale its operations in line with its financial goals.

  The company previously stated that it expects a substantial increase in its average annual investment commitments between 2024 and 2030.

  The firm anticipates investing between $2bn and $2.5bn a year over the next six years, twice the scale of its previous commitment to invest between $1bn and $1.3bn annually.

  Last week, it was reported that the utility developer lost over $25bn in market value, highlighting global and regional market volatility. 

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  Jennifer Aguinaldo