Egypt’s Orascom Construction Industries (OCI) has said its Saudi Arabian subsidiary has secured infrastructure contracts worth SR1.6bn ($420m) in the kingdom.

The firm said the contracts are expected to be formally signed by the end of July. They involve work on the projects in several locations across Saudi Arabia, where it is currently working on $790m-worth of additional projects.

OCI chief executive officer (CEO), Nassef Sawiris, recently told MEED the company has been pushing hard to gain a stronger foothold in the Saudi market, where its current projects include a highway to the Yemeni border, work on the Jeddah airport expansion and (with its Belgium-based affiliate Besix) a sports complex for Saudi Aramco.

In Egypt, Orascom has a construction backlog of about $1.5bn, comprising a mix of government and private projects. The largest is an $815m contract signed in early 2012 for the construction of the Grand Egyptian Museum, which will house ancient Egyptian artefacts at a site near the Pyramids at Giza.

OCI is also working on two separate retail projects for Dubai-based Majid Al-Futtaim – Cairo Festival City, to the east of the capital, and the Mall of Egypt, to the west. It also recently won a contract to build a plant for a multinational confectionery company that has decided to start producing in Egypt. Other ongoing projects include the Cairo metro, road construction, power station civil works and a hospital in the Red Sea resort of Hurghada.