Orascom Construction Industries (OCI) announced today that its Fertilizer Group has signed an agreement to acquire minorities in its Texas-based subsidiary Pandora Methanol LLC (Pandora) one week ahead of scheduled ammonia production. The acquisition takes the Group's stake to 100%. Pandora has been renamed to OCI North America.

OCI North America is an integrated ammonia-methanol plant located in Beaumont, Texas, on the Gulf Coast of the United States. The plant has a production capacity of 250,000 tons of ammonia and 750,000 tons of methanol per annum. In addition, the plant has an ammonia tank with a capacity of 18,000 tons and two methanol storage tanks with a capacity of 22,000 tons each. The plant has pipeline connections to adjacent customers and port access with dedicated methanol and ammonia import/export jetties and will ship both products along the Gulf Coast.

The plant is currently undergoing full rehabilitation. Ammonia production is expected to commence next week and methanol production is targeted to start in 2012.

About Orascom Construction Industries

OCI is one of Egypt's largest corporations with projects and investments across Europe, the Middle East, North and South America, North Africa, and Asia. The company directly employs more than 84,000 people and generated US$ 4.9 billion in revenues and US$ 1.1 billion in EBITDA in 2010. OCI currently has two core business activities. The OCI Fertilizer Group is a strategic owner and operator of nitrogen fertilizer plants in Egypt, the Netherlands, the United States, and Algeria with an international distribution platform spanning Latin America, the United States, Europe and Africa. These operations will exceed 7.0 million metric tons of capacity in 2012, positioning OCI among the top global nitrogen-based fertilizer producers. The OCI Construction Group is a leading construction contractor active in emerging markets. It primarily focuses on infrastructure projects in Europe, the Middle East and Africa in addition to industrial and high-end commercial projects.