Hyundai Heavy Industries gets more non-shipbuilding orders

Hyundai Heavy Industries Co., the world's biggest shipyard by orders, expects to easily achieve, if not surpass, its order target of $2 billion for its industrial plant and engineering business this year as it banks on getting large non-shipbuilding projects in the Middle East.
Hyundai Heavy and other South Korean shipyards have been venturing into other sectors to diversify their business portfolio in the face of declining shipbuilding orders.
"We may even exceed the target given the (projects) we already bid for and the (projects) we are planning to bid for in the Middle East," Senior Executive Vice President Chun In-soo told Dow Jones Newswires in an interview.
This year's target is lower than the company's actual plant orders of $2.8 billion in 2009 as the oil and gas plants that used to be part of the plant and engineering business now belong to the offshore and engineering division.
Among Hyundai Heavy's big projects in 2010 is the construction of a combined cycle power plant in Saudi Arabia as part of a consortium.
Over the next five years, Chun forecasts "there will be $10 billion-$15 billion worth of orders a year to establish the oil-related infrastructure in our six main markets in the Middle East," referring to Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman.