South Korea’s Posco Engineering & Construction has won a contract to provide the technology for a steel mill project in the Omani port of Sur.

The contract was awarded by project developer Sun Metals, which also handed Japanese trader Sojitz Corporation an offtake agreement, according to local media reports.

Sun Metals is planning to build a 2.5 million-tonnes-a-year (t/y) steel mill at the Sur Industrial Estate, located about 150 kilometres south of Muscat, with an investment of about $400m.

The project’s scope, which has more than doubled in size from the original planned 1.2 million-t/y capacity, includes two electric arc furnaces, two ladle refining furnaces, a billet caster, a billet cum bloom caster, along with a rebar mill and a merchant mill.

Sojitz will both supply the raw materials and distribute the finished products, which range from rebar to stainless steel pipes.

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 in early 2013.

Sun Metals was set up by a group of India-based investors to develop the steel project. The Sur steel complex will be supplied with oxygen from an industrial gases plant proposed to be built nearby by Qatar-based Buzwair Group.