Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. (MHI; Tokyo, Japan; www.mhi.com), together with China National Chemical Engineering No.7 Construction Co., Ltd., have signed a fertilizer plant construction project for Bangladesh Chemical Industries Corp., an organization owned by the Bangladesh government. This will be the largest fertilizer plant in Bangladesh, with production capacity of 2,800 metric tons (m.t.) per day. The project will be managed through an EPC (engineering, procurement and construction) contracting arrangement, with completion scheduled for 2022. As the next step, arrangements for financing have begun in cooperation with Marubeni Corp., who has plenty of proven records in construction projects of various plant and infrastructure facilities in Bangladesh, and the contract will officially come into effect once the financing is finalized.
The fertilizer plant will be built in Polash under the district of Narsingdi, 50 km northeast of the capital city of Dhaka. It will utilize natural gas produced in Bangladesh, and have the capacity to produce 1,600 m.t./d of ammonia and 2,800 m.t./d of urea.
Demand for fertilizer is booming to produce more agricultural products in Bangladesh, driven by the country’s high economic growth rate, which reached a record 7% in fiscal 2017.
MHI’s first fertilizer production plant in Bangladesh was built in 1992, and continues to maintain a high operating rate. Along with the ability to meet demands of a rapidly growing economy, MHI specifically received this contract in recognition of its own CO₂ recovery technologies that both reduce the environmental load and enhance urea production.