Borouge has awarded an engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract to a unit of Italy’s Maire Tecnimont for a fifth polypropylene plant in the Ruwais petrochemicals complex, Pipeline Oil and Gas Magazine reported.

The new plant in Abu Dhabi will have a capacity of 480,000 tons per year and is expected to come on stream in Q3 2021.

The company – a joint venture between the Abu Dhabi National Petroleum Company (ADNOC) and Austrian company Borealis – will see its total polypropylene production capacity grow to 2.24 million tons per year with the addition of the new plant.

The facility will be based on Borealis’s Borstar technology and will be integrated with the existing Borouge 3 complex in Ruwais.

The EPC contract award comes one year after ADNOC and Borealis announced plans for the construction of a Borouge 4 complex in Ruwais. Borouge 4 will house a mixed feedstock cracker and downstream derivatives units for both polyolefin and non-polyolefin products.