Doosan Heavy Industries and Construction (Doosan Heavy) has broken ground on the Tuwaiq Casting & Forging factory in the Ras Al Khair region of Saudi Arabia. Once online, the factory will be able to produce 60,000 tonnes of castings and forgings per year.
According to a statement, Tuwaiq Casting & Forging is a joint venture (JV) between Doosan Heavy, Saudi Arabian Industrial Investments Company (Dussur) and Saudi Aramco Development Company. The latter is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Saudi Aramco and was set up in January this year.
The foundry and forging plant is being developed at the King Salman Shipbuilding Complex near the Jubail area in eastern Saudi Arabia at an investment of $834mn. It is expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2025. The factory will manufacture cast and forged materials for pumps and valves for petrochemical plants in Saudi Arabia, and equipment for shipbuilding and offshore plants, said a company spokesperson.
Equipped with integrated production lines, including steel making, casting and forging, and processing, the Tuwaiq plant will occupy an area of 400,000sqm. Once operational, it is set to become Saudi Arabia’s largest casting and forging facility, he added.
“The foundry and forging plant construction is the Kingdom’s first project and is part of a joint effort to build a complete value chain with coastal industrial production, thereby extending this value chain from Saudi raw materials on land to end products such as excavators and ships. With this project, not only are we casting basic steel parts for the offshore yards of the industrial city of Ras Al Khair but also the entire Kingdom,” said Ras Al Khair Industrial Park CEO Ahmed bin Mohammed Hassan.
Through this project, Saudi Arabia aims to create 1,400 new job opportunities in the local community with a Saudisation ratio of more than 50%. The plan is to contribute to the increase of domestic products in the Kingdom, Hassan remarked.
In the long term, the project’s partners intend to expand the product mix of the facility to cover power generation plants and wind power plants, the statement noted.