L&T secures orders worth 2,500 crore for urea plant in Australia

The diversified firm L&T, Perdaman Chemicals & Fertilisers has given it a "significant" contract to construct a 2.3 million tonne urea facility in Australia. According to the firm, when it is finished, this facility will be one of the biggest urea plants in the world and the largest in Australia.

L&T described it as "a significant order" without providing the deal's worth. Significant order often denotes an amount between Rs. 1,000 and Rs. 2,500 crore. L&T Group Chairman and Designate Managing Director SN Subrahmanyan stated, "We've adopted a policy to not disclose commercial details of contracts as the value can change by the time of completion."

Italian business Saipem & Clough, the Engineering, Procurement, and Construction (EPC) contractor of Indian-owned Perdaman, got the contract.For the 2.30 MT per year urea plant and a 1.3 MT ammonia unit, L&T's Energy Hyrdocarbon contract calls for the production and supply of process and piperack modules. Orders for the project's urea equipment packaging have been received by L&T Heavy Engineering. According to Perdaman Chairman Vikas Rambal, the facility will be built on the Burrup Peninsula in Western Australia and, when complete, will be the largest urea plant in both Australia and the globe.

Subrahmanyan, the plant, which would be constructed at L&T's yards in Hazira and Kattupalli in Chennai before being transported to Australia, where the sections would be assembled, will also be the largest modular and pre-fabricated unit in the fertiliser sector globally. Because of the extraordinarily high work costs and labour shortage, we decided to adopt modular construction. This will be the route for our sector moving forward because even here we are having trouble sourcing skilled people, according to Subrahmanyan.

When asked about potential cost savings from performing the work locally,  the perspective of manpower and material costs, performing the job in Australia would result in a contract value increase of at least three times. A total of 50,000 tonnes of modules, which will be produced at L&T's Kattupalli factory and delivered in 32 months, are included in the contract's scope.