Lurgi wins orders worth in excess of €210 million
Bochum / Frankfurt am Main, March 7, 2005: Lurgi AG, a subsidiary of mg technologies ag, has won major international contracts together worth in excess of €210 million. Lurgi is to build the largest propane-processing plant of its kind for approximately €180 million in Saudi Arabia. In Indonesia it is constructing a plant that will produce fatty alcohol. The company has also signed an agreement to build a propylene plant in Iran. "Having thoroughly restructured its business and refocused its portfolio on profitable technologies, Lurgi is starting to gain momentum again. This surge in new orders demonstrates that the company is back on track. If this positive order trend continues, 2005 will see Lurgi – and all of mg’s Industrial Plant Engineering subsidiaries – operating profitably", said Klaus Moll, the member of mg's Executive Board responsible for Industrial Plant Engineering, at a press conference held by Lurgi in Frankfurt today.
The plant located in the Saudi Arabian industrial city of Yanbu will turn propane into approximately 400,000 tonnes per year of propylene, which is used to produce plastics. The customer is the Saudi Arabian National Petrochemical Company (NatPet). The plant is due to come on stream at the end of 2007.
Lurgi is building a fatty-alcohol plant in Indonesia for Sawit Mas. This plant, located in northeast Sumatra, is due to be operational in 2006. Fatty alcohol is mainly used in detergents and is more biodegradable than the conventional petrochemical additives used.
Lurgi has signed an agreement to build a propylene plant in Iran. This facility will be the first to use the methanol-to-propylene (MTP) process developed and patented by Lurgi on an industrial scale. This cost-effective gas-based process is used to turn methanol into propylene. In the past, this plastic has been manufactured almost exclusively from crude oil. The plant will be able to produce 100,000 tonnes of propylene per year and is scheduled to come on stream in 2009.
