LATEST INVESTMENTS

COAL, OIL & GAS

$5.6bn Japanese plant in Saudi

Japanese trading house Sumitomo Corporation is project leader on an electricity project in Saudi Arabia to build and operate a combined oil-fired power plant and water desalination complex north east of Riyadh along the Persian Gulf. The complex will generate up to one million kilowatts of electricity and process one million tonnes of water a day. The $5.6bn project is the largest overseas power project ever undertaken by a Japanese corporation. A company will be set up to build and operate the complex, with 40% of the capital to be put up by the Saudi government and 20% each by Sumitomo, the private Malaysian power provider Malakoff and a Saudi firm.

FOOD & TOBACCO

Sultan invests in Egypt retail

Kuwait-based Sultan Center Food Products, which has a diverse portfolio of companies across the Middle East, plans to invest $800m to open several wholesale and retail shops across Egypt.

HOTELS & TOURISM

Gazprom bound for Morocco

Russian giant Gazprom’s real estate subsidiary, Inteco, will invest $618m in real estate and tourism projects in northern Morocco. Inteco has set up a Moroccan group, Kudla, whose capital is listed at $21.1m, to undertake a luxury hotel, golf course and industrial complex project in the Mediterranean resort of Azla.

$55m hotel complex for Iraq

Abu Dhabi-based Rotana Hotels and Lebanon-based Malia Holding Sal have signed a partnership agreement for the construction of a $55m five-star property in Erbil in Iraq’s Kurdish region. The hotel will have 205 rooms and will be built in a 20,000 square metre plot. The hotel is expected to be operational in October 2009.

METALS

Blast furnace output boosted

Dutch firm Arcelormittal has completed a $39.05m refurbishment of its Newcastle Works blast furnace and sister plant in South Africa. The steel plants, some mills and the water treatment plants were refurbished during work carried out in May this year. While no additional capacity was created, an increase in tonnage is expected owing to the removal of limiting factors such as hearth hot spots and shell cracks. The company aims for a throughput of 5132 tonnes a day by the fourth quarter of this year, up from the previous volume of 4660 tonnes a day.

PHARMACEUTICALS

Casablanca $46.4m drug plant

France’s Sanofi-Aventis has invested $46.4m over the past three years in a new industrial facility near Casablanca in Morocco. The recently inaugurated industrial plant will manufacture cardiology drugs as well as therapies for thrombosis, diabetes, central nervous system diseases and internal medicine.

This investment news and data has been generated by fDi Markets, a crossborder investment tracking service that is part of the Financial Times Ltd's fDi Intelligence division www.fdiintelligence.com

Middle East & Africa FDI, 2008 (number of jobs)

Source: fDi Intelligence