Saudi Arabia’s National Industrialisation Company’s (Tasnee) has pushed back the start-up date of its ilmenite (titanium-iron oxide) smelter project in Jizan due to delays in technical work and testing.

Commercial production at the $400m project is expected to start in the first half of 2017 compared with the previous start-up estimate of the second half of 2016. Construction started in 2012, according to previous MEED reports. It was initially expected to start prodcution in 2014.

The project is being executed by Finnish engineering group Outotec and will have the capacity to produce 500,000 tonnes a year (t/y) of titanium dioxide slag, as well as 235,000 t/y of high-purity pig iron.

“The technical work and testing for the project trial start-up in Jizan Economic City is still ongoing because of the large size of the project and the nature of the technology, which needs a long time to conduct the necessary tests to ensure safety and quality as per global standards in such plants,” Tasnee said in a statement on the Saudi Stock Exchange (Tadawul).

Titanium slag from the plant will be supplied to Cristal’s titanium dioxide plant in Yanbu.

The ilmenite smelter project is owned equally by Tasnee and Cristal, which is 79 per cent owned by Tasnee.