By Cho Mu-hyun
Samsung Engineering, the plant making affiliate of Samsung Group, said Thursday it won an order worth 700 billion won in Azerbaijan, successfully venturing into the untapped market.
The firm inked a deal with the State Oil Company of the Azerbaijan Republic to build an ammonia and urea fertilizer plant there.
Samsung CEO Park Ki-seok visited Baku and met with his counterpart at the state-run firm, Rovnag Abdullayev.
The fertilizer plant will be built at Sumgayit, 35 kilometers to the northwest of the capital, and will produce 1,200 and 2,000 tons of ammonia and urea, respectively.
The company plans to oversee the design, construction, procurement and initial test-run for the project to be completed in 2016.
The Korean firm said it was confident of successful completion, citing its recently boosted track record in the Middle East.
It has already won and built billion won worth of fertilizer plants in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. “We think we will continue our streak of winning orders in this region and the fact that countries here are planning massive public projects has really been a boon to our business,” said a senior executive of Samsung Engineering based in the region.
All major local plant and construction companies are eyeing the area as governments there have announced numerous housing and industrial projects after the Arab Spring in 2011. “Countries especially in the Gulf Cooperation Council are pouring in billions of won into these projects because they’ve seen the extreme protests that occurred in neighboring countries,” said a high-level official of a Korean firm with multiple offices in the region, declining to be named.
Samsung Engineering is also a major presence in Southeast Asia and South America.
The firm is hoping that the recent win will give a push as it aims to expand its presence in making fertilizer, desalination and wastewater plants along with steel mills and mining facilities.
Samsung Engineering saw a turnover of 11.44 trillion won last year despite the global slump and believes it will maintain a high growth rate going forward, according to company officials.