ASEC Holding announced that Portfolio Company ASEC Engineering and Management, 49.8 per cent of which is owned by Citadel Capital, has signed three five-year renewable contracts to provide technical management services for three cement plants in Egypt, in addition to renewing a fourth for a cement plant, which has been managed by the company since 2000. ASEC Engineering will be in charge of seeing to the start-up of the plants, beginning production during 3Q/2011, after which the company will be responsible for operating the plants over a period of five years. The first new contract is for a plant owned by El-Nahda Co. for Industries in the Governorate of Qena, while the other two are assets of South Valley Cement Company [SVCC] in the Governorate of Beni Suef and the Building Materials Industrial Company [BMIC] in the Governorate of Assuit. El-Nahda's plant, built by China's TCDRI, has a nominal output of 5,500 tons of clinker per day and is scheduled to go into production in the third quarter of this year. Meanwhile, the SVCC plant has a nominal output of 5,000 tons of clinker per day; the first clinker was produced on 7 July 2011. ASEC Engineering has been carrying out the engineering work for the SVCC plant since January 2007 and took over the operation and management of the clinker grinding and packing plant in October 2008. In Assiut, ASEC Engineering will provide technical management for BMIC's 5,000 ton-per-day cement plant. The first phase of agreement will cover clinker grinding and packing. The company will begin commercial operations in the third quarter of this year; clinker production will begin in the second quarter of 2012.
