Webuild and Saipem sign 2.56 billion contract for urea plant in Australia – Corriere.it

Worth 2.56 billion euros: it is the order to build the Urea Ceres plant in Australia that the 50% joint venture between Webuild – through the subsidiary Clough – and Saipem can start. Yesterday – announced the group led by Pietro Salini – the financial closure and the other necessary contractual conditions were reached. «Webuild – Salini commented – enters a new promising market, that of urea production, whose demand is growing on a global scale. This contract adds valuable expertise to our group thanks to the integrated skills with Clough, confirming the strategic nature of its acquisition, and gives us a global role and visibility”.

The production capacity

The plant, located on the Burrup Peninsula on the coast of Western Australia, will be completed by mid-2027 and, with a production capacity of over 2 million tonnes of urea per year, will be one of the largest in the world. The technology will make it possible to produce urea fertilizer by transforming natural gas first into ammonia and then into urea. Perdaman and the joint venture have undertaken to make the plant net carbon zero by 2050. The contract covers the engineering, procurement, construction, pre-commissioning and commissioning of the new plant. The work, built on behalf of Perdaman Chemicals and Fertilisers, speaks 100% Italian, with Cdp a shareholder of both groups: it has 12.8% of Saipem and 16.7% of Webuild.

Salini: «Aggregators of skills»

« We are launching a project together with Saipem, a partner of Italian nationality and like us participated by Cdp, in an alliance that we could say assumes an institutional role for Iaese and for all the made in Italy, which we drive, as aggregators of skills of small and medium-sized companies in the supply chain. With this project we are acquiring skills in a rapidly growing sector on a global level and which plays a strategic role for agriculture, skills that we intend to transfer to a new class of young builders that we train in Italy and around the world. Furthermore, the production of urea is essential to support agriculture from a food security perspective, it is one of the main fertilizers used for agriculture worldwide. This project therefore assumes a strategic value for diversifying urea production in the world, at a time when the war in Ukraine, one of the largest exporters of fertilizers in the world, has further aggravated the situation of food insecurity in which several hundred millions of people in the world”.

The potential

But could Webuild have other orders in this area? «We must not forget – replies Salini – that we are a company with deep roots in Italy, but we generate 70% of our turnover abroad and we continue to seek business opportunities abroad also thanks to subsidiaries in strategic and low-lying countries risk such as Australia and the United States. We are exploring other opportunities not only in Australia but also in other countries such as the United States, North Africa and Ethiopia, a country that alone imports the equivalent of one billion dollars a year of urea to produce fertilizers for local agriculture. The market linked to the production of urea is growing on a global scale, particularly in the United States, Australia as well as in Africa. Following the export crisis linked to the pandemic and the geopolitical tensions of the war in Ukraine, the price of urea has grown significantly in the last two years from 200-400 euros per tonne to 800 euros, up to an estimated 1000 euros per tonne in the next two years. years. Russia and China are drastically reducing their exports of fertilizers, a phenomenon which translates into growing investments in the sector in particular by countries that historically depend most on Russian exports, such as Egypt and Oman, but not only. From a commercial point of view, therefore, building this plant puts us in a favorable situation to seize further opportunities at a global level: in 2023 investments of 32 billion euros are planned for new plants for the production of ammonia, one of the components for the production of urea . Given that it is expected to double to 59 billion euros in 2024.