Air Products Joint Venture with Abdullah Hashim Wins Contract to Supply New ASUs to Shadeed Iron & Steel

Two new air separation units (ASUs) for Shadeed Iron & Steel’s production plant in the Sohar Industrial Port of Oman will be supplied by a joint venture between the Abdullah Hashim Group of the Kingdom of Saudia Arabia and Air Products (NYSE: APD). The ASUs will supply oxygen and nitrogen for iron and steel production at the Shadeed Iron & Steel facilities in Sohar, Oman. The ASUs, to be designed and engineered by Air Products in the United Kingdom, are scheduled to come on-stream in August 2008.

“We have a 30-year relationship with the Abdullah Hashim Group, having supplied them with a number of ASU production facilities, and we regularly work together to supply ASUs to other clients in the region,” explained Richard Boocock, Air Products’ vice president, Tonnage Gases, Equipment & Energy, Europe and Middle East. “Abdullah Hashim is a well established and respected name. Combined with our large scale engineering capability and product supply reliability, together we have proved to be a winning formula for Shadeed.”

“Air Products has built leadership positions in the wider Middle East supplying gases, equipment and operations expertise into sectors such as GTL, LNG and refining. Now, we are proving that we can compete and win in other sectors, such as steel production,” said Boocock.