India’s Sun Metals is expected to tender the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract for its integrated steel plant at Sur, Oman, in the second quarter, according to a company working on the project.

The project was put on hold in the fourth quarter of 2011, but has since been revived after Sun Metals appointed UK-based Steelworks Engineering Systems as the process consultant early this year. The company will handle the re-engineering and refurbishment of equipment from an existing disassembled steel mill in Sur, on Oman’s central coast.

Sun Metals was set up by a group of India-based investors to develop the steel project, which has a planned capacity of 1.2 million tonnes a year (t/y). The scope of the scheme includes a raw material processing plant, an iron ore pelletising plant and a direct-reduced iron (DRI) plant.

As of May, the project was still in the design phase, but the EPC tender is expected to be floated in the coming months.

The Sur steel complex will be supplied with oxygen from an industrial gases plant proposed to be built nearby by Qatar-based Buzwair Group.