A joint venture announced by General Electric earlier this week will be manufacturing industrial gas turbines in Saudi Arabia by the end of this year, according to the CEO of the venture partner. Rasheed al-Shubaili, the CEO of Dussur, said the first H-Class turbines manufactured in that country would be available in 2018.
The new joint venture is valued at $267 million, according to reports, with Dussur owning 55% and GE holding 45%.
Dussur, formerly Saudi Arabian Industrial Investments Co. (SAIIC), was set up last year by the Kingdom’s major industrial firms, Saudi Aramco and Saudi Basic Industries Corp. (SABIC). In the joint venture, Dussur will invest to expand the GE Manufacturing and Technology Center (Gemtec) in Dammam, which is a heavy-duty gas turbine repair operation that started up in 2012. The turbines produced at Gemtec will be sold to manufacturers and utilities in the Kingdom and to international customers, according to al-Shubaili.
The Gemtec project is one of nine that GE announced earlier this week, ad part of the broader defense and trade package agreed to by U.S. and Saudi Arabia. That package is linked to the Kingdom’s ambitious economic diversification program called Saudi Vision 2030, and GE has said its various agreements and Memoranda of Understanding within that package are worth $15 billion.
