São Paulo – The Oman-based cement company Oman Cement Company is looking for partners in Brazil for a new plant in Duqm, an industrial and port free trade zone in Oman. The company’s chairman, Abdullah Abbas Ahmed, visited the Arab Brazilian Chamber of Commerce this Friday (24), alongside other executives and the Arab country’s ambassador in Brasília, Amad Hamood Salim Al Abri. The group was welcomed by the Arab Chamber’s CEO, Michel Alaby, and Special Projects Advisor, Tamer Mansour.
<
According to Ahmed, the output capacity of the company’s current plant can be expanded, but the idea of the project in Duqm is to build a plant that would present lower costs, use alternative sources of energy and that can produce items of higher added-value. The current facilities use gas in its production.
“We want to form a consortium in Duqm of companies that have synergies in areas such as technology, financial and others,” said Ahmed to ANBA. In Brazil, he hopes to find partners that can add innovations to the initiative in the form of new production technologies, alternative power sources and innovative projects.
“We are opening the doors [to Brazilian partners],” said Ahmed. Next week, representatives of the Omani company plan to meet with Brazilian entrepreneurs, researchers and experts of the sector.
The Oman Cement Company’s executives pointed out that the Duqm hub is used as a distribution center of products to other countries and regions.
A company that already uses Oman as an industrial and logistics hub is Brazilian mining company Vale, which has at the Sohar Port an iron ore pellet plant, a maritime terminal and storage facilities. So much so that iron ore is by far the main exported item from Brazil to the Arab country.
From January to October of this year, Brazilian exports to Oman totaled USD 592 million, an increase of 46.5% over the same period of 2016. Iron ore accounted for USD 402.5 million, up 84.6% in the same comparison.
Other items exported by Brazil to Oman are poultry, steel pipes, maize and signal flares. The data is from the Ministry of Industry, Foreign Trade and Services (MDIC).
On the other hand, Oman exported to the Brazilian market USD 93,4 million from January to October, up 27% over last year’s first ten months. The main items sent to Brazil were urea, aluminum, frozen sardines, polypropylene and Sulphur.
*Translated by Sérgio Kakitani
