South Korea’s Hyundai Engineering & Construction is the favourite to win a $937m deal to build the supporting infrastructure for the third phase expansion of the Abu Dhabi Polymers Company (Borouge) Ruwais plastics complex.

Contractors have named the firm as the most likely to win the offsites and utilities engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) deal after it submitted the lowest price in a 24 May competitive bid round.

Hyundai’s price of $937m beat off bids of $966m from fellow South Korean firm GS Engineering & Construction and $1.15bn from Spain’s Tecnicas Reunidas.

The deal covers buildings, storage and basic processing facilities, alongside other utilities at the planned petrochemicals plant. This includes seawater cooling systems, chemical and oil product storage space, and the main buildings at the site.

It is part of the third-phase expansion of Borouge’s Ruwais facilities, Borouge 3. Once the scheme is complete in early 2014 the company will produce 4.5 million tonnes a year (t/y) of plastics at the complex.

MEED reported on 19 May that a consortium of South Korea’s Samsung Engineering and Italy’s Tecnimont, which also bid on the offsites and utilities contract, was the favourite to win a $1.45bn EPC deal to build the main polyolefins unit at the complex and the $500m low density polyethylene (LDPE) plant after submitting the lowest price in a 16 May bid round (MEED 19:5:2010).

Contractors add that the consortium could still win the offsites and utilities contract as it also submitted a combined price for all three deals on 23 May.

In July 2009, the company awarded a $1.07bn deal to Germany’s Linde to build a 1.5 million t/y cracker unit for Borouge 3. The cracker will break down ethane, a component of natural gas, into ethylene. Once completed, the cracker will be one of the biggest of its kind in the world.