Saudi Arabia's National Industrialisation Company (Tasnee) said it has chosen Taiwan's CTCI and Japan's Chiyoda Corp to build a titanium sponge plant for its majority-owned Cristal subsidiary.

The two contractors are expected to finish construction of the plant in Yanbu on the Red Sea coast in the first half of 2017, with trial and commercial operations due in the third quarter of that year, Tasnee said in a statement on Sunday.

The plant, which will cost an estimated $290 million, is to have an annual capacity of 15,600 tonnes. Titanium sponge is an intermediate product that is purified into ingots and mill products.

Tasnee and Cristal each have a 32.5 per cent stake in the project, while Toho Titanium has 35 per cent.-Reuters