Builders cobble together deals worth $1.45 billion

Korean builders have won deals worth a combined $1.45 billion from overseas in recent weeks, mostly from the Middle East, a trade group said yesterday, raising expectations that they will see better performances in foreign markets this year.

Doosan Heavy Industries & Construction, Korea’s leading power equipment manufacturer, has clinched a $520 million deal to build two power plant boilers in India, according to the International Contractors Association of Korea.

The construction arm of Samsung C&T has secured a $100 million deal to construct a building for a local bank in Saudi Arabia. Hyundai Heavy Industries, the world’s largest shipyard company, bagged a $290 million order to build an oil refinery and terminal in the kingdom’s southwestern economic city of Jazan, according to the association.

Daelim Industrial has signed a $210 million deal to build a 100-megawatt power plant in the Philippines.
Hyundai Amco, the construction unit of automaker Hyundai Motor Group, has clinched a $180 million deal to construct a new building in California for Hyundai Motor America, a U.S. unit of Hyundai Motor.

Hyundai Motor and its smaller Kia Motors are the flagship companies of the world’s fifth-largest automotive group.

STX Heavy Industries, a unit of Korea’s STX Group, has signed a $150 million order to build a gas turbine plant in Iraq, according to the association.

The association predicted local builders to clinch overseas orders worth more than $70 billion this year.

Korean builders won overseas orders worth $64.9 billion in 2012, up 9.8 percent from a year earlier.

Yonhap