Abu Dhabi’s Emirates Steel has appointed France’s BNP Paribas as financial adviser on the $800m phase three expansion of its Mussafah plant.

The financing will be for the development of a 1.4 million tonne-a-year flat steel plant. In mid-2011, Emirates Steel started approaching a group of mainly international banks and asked them to pitch for the role of financial adviser on the project (MEED 8:7:11).

BNP Paribas was up against the UK’s HSBC and Royal Bank of Scotland, France’s Natixis, Germany’s Deutsche Bank and National Bank of Abu Dhabi for the financial adviser role.

In August, the company started seeking a contractor to build the phase three expansion and is expected to award a contract for the development of the project in early 2012.

A source close to the project says financing talks with banks will start later in 2012 once a contractor is in place. The company was last in the market to raise finance in 2010, when it closed a $2.2bn facility to fund the development of phase two of its expansion strategy. That deal was arranged by Natixis.