Senaat, the industrial conglomerate, and Ducab, the power cable maker, are linking up to open a Dh220 million aluminium rod mill in Abu Dhabi, providing a boost to the emirate’s strategy to develop a downstream industrial heartland.
Based in Khalifa Industrial Zone (Kizad), the facility will make aluminium alloy rods and wires for use in cable-making and other manufacturing, as well as bare overhead conductors, mainly for use in the utility industry.
“This new joint venture with Ducab is a testament to our ability to successfully create, optimise and champion industrial assets in Abu Dhabi and the UAE, creating value and further expanding the country’s industrial capabilities,” said Suhail bin Athaeeth, the chief executive of Senaat, an Abu Dhabi state-owned industrial holding company. It jointly owns Dubai-based Ducab with Investment Corporation of Dubai, a sovereign wealth fund owned by the Dubai Government.
Known as Ducab Aluminium, the venture will start construction of the facility will start in the first quarter of next year, ready for opening in early 2016. The facility aims to reach a capacity of about 50,000 tonnes a year.
The mill will be the latest project within Kizad’s “hot metal road”, a special route for transporting liquid molten aluminium direct from the Emirates Aluminium (Emal) smelter to downstream industries spanning extrusion to casting. The process cuts the cost involved in re-melting the metal.
Officials see the linking up of raw producers with manufacturers further down the industrial chain as vital to broadening the depth of Abu Dhabi’s non-oil economy and adding value to its exports.
The mill will not be the first aluminium rod manufacturer in the region. Producers in Bahrain and Oman both already make such products.
But Andrew Shaw, the managing director of Ducab, said he was confident the venture would have no shortage of customers.
“We are not the first in the GCC but we are in the UAE,” he said. “Our advantage is that we’re integrated with the largest smelter in the region and can take hot metal from them as well and we are on the doorstep of Kizad and have a route to market with our existing customers.”
Ducab Aluminium will draw upon Ducab’s existing sales network, targeting markets in the GCC and Mena regions initially. European and Indian subcontinent markets will be explored later.
Overhead conductors will be marketed to Ducab’s existing customers of underground cables. Rods will be used as material in Ducab’s Jebel Ali facility for making cables.
The venture is also the latest example of Dubai and Abu Dhabi companies working together. In June, a merger was announced between Emal and Dubai Aluminium (Dubal), to create a new larger aluminium producer, Emirates Global Aluminium.
Headquartered in Dubai’s Jebel Ali, Ducab has been making cables since 1979 and last year turned a profit of 10 per cent. It already has a presence in Abu Dhabi through the operation of a copper rod mill in Mussafah.
tarnold@thenational.ae
