The UAE’s Ducab is to complete its planned $64m high voltage (HV) and extra high voltage (EHV) cable factory joint venture in February 2011.

Managing director, Andrew Shaw, tells MEED that equipment has already started to arrive for the 30,000 tonnes-a-year plant at Jebel Ali in Dubai and that the company will begin installation in July.

The factory will be the Middle East’s largest HV and EHV cable plant,” Shaw says. “Dubai and Abu Dhabi are growing, but no one wants the pylons coming into cities so the demand for underground EHV cables is going to grow massively.”

The plant is designed to make EHV cables for the region’s utilities companies and will be one of the very few standalone EHV factories anywhere in the world.

The project is a joint venture between Ducab and the UAE’s two main utilities companies. Ducab has a 50 per cent share while Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (Dewa) and Abu Dhabi Water and Electricity Authority (Adwea) each have a 25 per cent share.

Ducab also said that it is still interested in building a manufacturing facility in Qatar even though it has yet to identify a suitable site.

“Ducab has been part of the Qatari market for a long time through our distribution joint venture and in 2009 through our own Ducab Sales office and a logistics centre,” Shaw says. “We still intend to start production there and we are currently locating a suitable site.”

Ducab is a 50:50 joint venture between the state-owned Gulf Holding Corporation from Abu Dhabi and the state-owned Investment Corporation of Dubai.