Asec Engineering and Management, a portfolio company of Asec Holding, has signed three five-year renewable contracts to provide technical management services for three cement plants.

A fourth contract, signed in 2000, has been extended for five years and now runs through mid-2016.

The first new contract is for a plant owned by El-Nahda for industries in the Governorate of Qena, while the other two are assets of South Valley Cement Company (SVCC) in the Governorate of Beni Suef and the Building Materials Industrial Company (BMIC) in the Governorate of Assuit.

El-Nahda’s plant, built by China’s TCDRI, has a nominal output of 5,500 tons of clinker per day and is scheduled to go into production in the third quarter of this year.

Meanwhile, the SVCC plant has a nominal output of 5,000 tons of clinker per day; first clinker was produced on July 7.

Asec Engineering has been carrying out the engineering work for the SVCC plant since January 2007 and took over the operation and management of the clinker grinding and packing plant in October 2008.

In Assiut, Asec Engineering will provide technical management to BMIC’s 5,000 ton-per-day cement plant. Phase one of the agreement, covering clinker grinding and packing, will begin commercial operations in the third quarter of this year; clinker production will begin in the second quarter of 2012.

Aresco, another Asec Holding portfolio company, is carrying out a $130 million contract to provide the civil, electrical and mechanical work for the BMIC plant’s construction.

Aresco is also carrying out the steel fabrication as well as testing and commissioning on behalf of BMIC. Group companies ASA and ESACO also play roles in the construction, to which Asec Engineering was the lead consultant.

“These three contracts will see Asec Engineering conduct the start-up and commissioning works, after which we will take charge of complete plant operations for a period of five years while providing all necessary spare parts and consumables,” said Mohamed Galal Yakout, Asec Engineering chief executive officer.

Each of the three plants will create more than 250 permanent jobs, the majority of which will be filled by members of the communities in which they are based.

The agreements bring to 14 the number of kilns for which Asec Engineering provides management services with a total output of c.18 million tons of clinker per year, a 25% rise.

Two of the production lines that Asec Engineering manages are outside Egypt, namely in Sudan and Jordan with a total annual output of 1.4 MTPA in Sudan and 1.5 MTPA in Jordan.

Meanwhile, Asec Engineering has won a five-year renewal of a contract with Sinai Cement. Under the terms of the contract extension, Asec Engineering will continue to provide services for the 18,700 ton per day clinker plant located in the city of Al-Arish in Egypt’s North Sinai governorate through June 2016; the contract was first signed in 2000. – TradeArabia News Service