Saudi Arabian Mining Company (Maaden) has received the bids for the major fertiliser package at its proposed $7bn phosphates mining city at Waad al-Shamal in the north of the kingdom.

Contractors submitted bids for the package, which includes process plants that will produce diammonium phosphate (DAP) and nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium (NPK) fertilisers, on 11 June.  

The companies bidding for the package are:

• Daewoo Engineering & Construction (South Korea)
• GS E&C (South Korea)
• Hanwha E&C (South Korea)
• Hyundai E&C  (South Korea)
• Intecsa (Spain)
• KBR/STX Heavy Industries (US/South Korea)
• Samsung Engineering (South Korea)
• SNC Lavalin (Canada)
• Uhde (Germany)

“The Maaden project is one of the largest in the kingdom and there are a lot of packages,” says a source familiar with the project. “With up to 10 packages at Waad al-Shamal, we are seeing many contractors declining to bid on some of the packages, while concentrating more on others.”

Many of the original packages have now been split into their composite parts and offered as single tenders. The submission dates for the packages have also been spread across the summer to allow for proper evaluation periods.

The ammonia plant tender was submitted in April and the four South Korean contractors bidding for the scheme will be informed as to the winner by the end of June.

The other packages and their respective submission bid dates are:

• Beneficiation: 1 August
• Phosphoric acid: 8 August
• Sulphur and captive power plant: 4 July
• Sodium tripolyphosphate, purifying phosphoric acid and dicalcium phosphate: 6 September
• Utilities and offsites and infrastructure: 14 September

The captive power plant will be 260MW and will supply power to the process plants and the mine. The infrastructure will also only account for the process facilities. Other packages expected to be made available will include early works, a power plant and a contract to connect the city to the minerals railway.

The US’s Jacobs Engineering is carrying out the front-end engineering and design (feed) and the US’ Fluor is carrying out the project management consultancy for the technical packages, worth a total of about $4bn, at the city. The US’ Bechtel is carrying out the engineering and PMC for all works not included in the process facilities.

The city is being built so Maaden can fully utilise the phosphates from its Al-Khabra mine.

The scope of works for the city will include a mining component, as well as eight different processing plants, and a utilities and offsites package. The phosphate produced at Al-Khabra is low in heavy metal content and thus ideal to be used for food production, as well as fertiliser and animal feed. The measured reserves of the Al-Khabra deposit are estimated to be 236 million tonnes.

In March, Maaden also announced that it was joining forces with the US’ Mosaic and the Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (Sabic) to build the city. Maaden will retain a 60 per cent stake with Mosaic and Sabic taking a 25 per cent and 15 per cent stake respectively.  

Riyadh also plans to use the city as a catalyst for the economic development of the area. Waad al-Shami will become the major phosphates hub in the kingdom and a major downstream phosphates cluster for attracting international companies is also planned for the area.