Doosan Swings
Project Order
The company clinches $850 million desalination project in Saudi Arabia

The Doosan Heavy Industries and Construction Co. (President Kim Dae-joong) announced recently that it has clinched an order from Saudi Arabia for the construction of its Shuaiba Desalination Plant, the largest such project in the world, worth $850 million. The contract for the three-stage plant was signed in Riyadh in the presence of Fashied Al Shalif, the minister of Water & Energy, chairman of the ACWA consortium Mohammed Abdullah Abunayyan and President Kim, the company said.
Under the terms of the contract, Doosan Heavy will take charge of all phases of the project from designing, the purchase of equipment and test-run as called for in the Engineering, Procurement and Construction method. The project will be completed by June, 2009 with a daily production of 880,000 tons of soft water. The project will also include the construction of three thermal power plants with the capacity to generate 917 MW of electricity. Power and water produced at the plants will be supplied to the Mecca and Medina regions.
Water produced by the Shuaiba plant will be enough to be used by 3 million people daily, the biggest in the world. The second-stage Shuaiba plant and Hujaira plant in the United Arab Emirate both built by Doosan with the capacities to produce 500,000 tons of desalinated water were the biggest thus far. The Shuaiba project is the first one to be built with civilian funds in Saudi Arabia, giving Doosan an advantage in securing orders for additional civilian projects in the oil-rich Middle East country. Doosan worked hard to win the project over its rivals from such countries as Belgium and Britain and other world-renowned builders.
Park Yune-shik, head of the desalination construction team for Doosan, said Doosan clinched the project owing to its superb technology for one-module evaporation equipment production and the hybrid construction technique making the project highly economical, which are recognized the world over.
Doosan has been put in an excellent position to win the similar projects all over the Middle East in the days ahead, the team head said. Doosan Heavy won desalination projects in the region worth $4.5 billion since the 1990s, enough to generate 3.66 million tons of soft water daily in the region, securing some 40 percent of the market, the largest in the region. Doosan had been able to win the project due to the fund pledged by the Korea Exim Bank totaling $450 million in the form of project financing. The Project Finance International, a professional publication on project financing in Britain, selected the project as the Deal of the Year.
Up to now, Doosan's power-related businesses have been divided into a number of separate business groups, such as Thermal Power Plant BG and Turbine Generator BG. However, because the number of turnkey projects in the global power market is increasing, Doosan has decided to integrate its Thermal Power Plant BG and Turbine Generator BG into a single Power BG in order to improve customer satisfaction and strengthen EPC competitiveness.
The structure of the newly organized power BG will include smaller divisions and teams of different products, marketing, and business management aimed at creating added value based on human resources. With the new integrated structure of Thermal and TG Business Groups, Doosan will increase the efficiency of responsibility and project management, and thus improve customer support.
Doosan has also integrated the marketing, business management, A/E, and service activities that the different business groups had been carrying out independently in the past and created a head of Marketing & Business Management under the Power BG.
President & CEO Kim Dae-joong said, "With the recent reorganization, we will be able to take up a more advantageous position in our competition with other advanced companies and to help our customers by improving the efficiency of overseas marketing and turnkey project management." nw

(left photo) Officials of Doosan Heavy Industries and Construction Co. including President Kim Dae-joong shake hands with Mohammed Abdullah Abunayyan, chairman of the ACWA consortium after signing the agreement in Riyadh.
(right photo) Doosan Heavy Industries and Construction Co. President Kim Dae-joong