By CONRAD RAJ
SEMBAWANG Engineers & Constructors (SBW), formerly a subsidiary of SembCorp Industries and now a member of India's Punj Lloyd Group, yesterday announced its involvement in a US$200 million polyethylene plant in Thailand.
The company said its UK subsidiary, Simon Carves Ltd, had signed a letter of intent (LOI) on Nov 30 to start work immediately on an EPC (engineering, procurement, construction) contract with Thailand's PTT Polyethylene Company (PTT PE) for a new 300,000 tonne low density polyethylene plant.
The plant, co-owned by Toyo Thai Corporation, is to be built at PTT PE's site at Map-Ta-Phut as part of its cracker complex. Construction work on the facility is expected to commence in the fourth quarter of next year and is expected to be completed by the first quarter of 2010. PTT PE is a wholly owned subsidiary of PTT Chemical Company.
The Thai plant will be the 36th high pressure polyethylene plant of this type executed by Simon Carves, which has more than 100 year's experience in the field which it leads.
The LOI was announced at the launch of a new corporate identity by 24-year-old SBW. Punj Lloyd chairman Atul Punj explained the change: 'Sembawang E&C is a design-and-build engineering and construction service provider with core capabilities in engineering, procurement and construction management, while Punj Lloyd is essentially an engineering construction company.
'This new identity will help to create a strong, unified branding platform for the group. With the inclusion of Sembawang under the brand name of Punj Lloyd, the company would come to be recognised as a part of a group that is a global provider of integrated EPC services.'
SBW, which was recently sold to Punj Lloyd for around $40 million by SembCorp, has, with its subsidiaries, over $1.3 billion worth of work in hand, to keep its 1,200 employees busy till 2010. SembCorp suffered an exceptional loss of $22 million from the sale.
It is the largest engineering and construction group in South-east Asia, with core capabilities in process engineering and design, civil engineering and building construction, and has experience in 35 countries, including China, India, Mexico, Middle East, South-east Asia, and the UK.
Punj Lloyd, listed on the stock exchanges of Mumbai and New Delhi, is among the largest engineering and construction companies in India providing integrated design, engineering, procurement, construction and project management services for energy and infrastructure sector projects.
Its operations are spread across the Middle East, Caspian, Asia-Pacific, Africa and South Asia.
