Saudi Arabia-based Gasan Investment & Industrial Development Company has awarded South Korea’s Hanwha Engineering & Construction a contract to build a calcined petroleum coke (CPC) plant at Jubail.

Hanwha will carry out the engineering, procurement and construction for the scheme, which has an estimated budget of about $350m and will have a capacity of 500,000 tonnes a year.

The construction phase should take 24 months and the plant is expected to be fully commissioned by the end of 2017. The offtake will be sold in-kingdom to steel, aluminium and titanium oxide producers, which use CPC as a raw material.

The project has been planned since 2011, and is being executed in line with Riyadh’s industrial diversification initiative.