Cairo-based Orascom Construction Industries (OCI) announced on 5 September that it had been awarded a turn-key engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract by its wholly-owned subsidiary Iowa Fertilizer Company to build a greenfield fertilizer plant in southeastern Iowa. OCI said the total contract value is expected to exceed $1bn and that the plant will utilize proven state-of-the-art production technologies from Kellogg Brown and Root, Stamicarbon and ThyssenKrupp Uhde.
The plant will have the capacity to produce 1.5-2mn tons/year of ammonia, urea, urea ammonium nitrate (UAN) and diesel exhaust fluid. DEF is an aqueous urea solution used to reduce nitrous oxide emissions from diesel engines. The plant will process natural gas from the local supply grid. Products will be sold in the US domestic market. OCI said that Stamicarbon parent company Tecnimont will provide engineering and procurement services for the ammonia line, while Uhde will provide similar services for the urea, UAN and DEF lines. Construction work on the plant is expected to take 35 months. OCI has set up several nitro-gen fertilizer plants in the Middle East and with the Iowa plant partners it has already built four in Egypt and Algeria with a combined value of more than $3bn. (CONTINUED - 295 WORDS)
