March 24nd, 2006

Maire Tecnimont Group, through its subsidiary Tecnimont, has been awarded an over 1,000 MMUS$ contract, as a consortium leader, in order to construct Polymer plants inside the RABIGH Petrochemical Complex in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, 160 km from Jeddah, on the Western coast of the country.

The client is Rabigh Refining and Petrochemical Company (PETRORabigh), joint-venture created in Saudi Arabia between Sumitomo Chemical Co. (Japan) and Saudi Arabian Oil Company (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia), two of the greatest petrochemical and oil&gas field global players.

The contract covers the supply of detailed engineering, procurement, construction, pre-commissioning and commissioning of the following production units:

  • Two 350,000 tons/year Polypropylene units based on Sumitomo Chemical Co. technology.

  • One 250,000 tons/year Easy-Processing Polyethylene unit (EPPE) (Sumitomo Chemical technology).

  • One 350,000 tons/year Linear Low Density Polyethylene unit (LLDPE) (Sumitomo Chemical technology);

  • One 300,000 tons/year High Density Polyethylene unit (HDPE) using Basell technology (Germany);

  • One 50,000 tons/year butene-1 unit based on the French AXENS technology.
The plants are scheduled to be completed by middle of 2008.

The project will become part of the new industry settlement, including other production units (refinery, warehousing and other utilities) and infrastructure, whose global investment value is 9.8 billions USD.

The contract will be performed by Tecnimont, in consortium with Sumitomo Chemical Engineering Co. for the off-shore activities, and by Tecnimont Arabia Ltd., in consortium with AICO (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia), for the on-shore activities. In both cases Maire Tecnimont Group - through its own associated companies - is the company leader.

It is the most important contract - in absolute value - ever achieved by Tecnimont and contributes to strengthen its presence in the Gulf market, where in 2005-2006 the company achieved a 2,700 million Euros job portfolio (1,400 of which in Saudi Arabia).

Fabrizio Di Amato - Maire Tecnimont Group CEO: "With this contract we confirm our leadership in the polyolefins field in a strategic area of the twenty-first century world economy, as the gate for the emerging economies of Far East".

-Ends-

Press Release 2007