Hyundai Engineering & Construction (Hyundai E&C) has won a 380 billion won project to build a hydroelectric power plant in Georgia.
Hyundai E&C announced on Nov. 18 that it has received a letter of intent from JSC Nenskra Hydro, the owner, to win a total of $737 million in bids for the hydroelectric power plant construction project, along with Limak, a builder in Turkey. It is the first time that Hyundai E&C has set up a bridgehead for Georgia.
JSC Nenskra Hydro is a joint venture set up jointly by the Korea Water Resources Corp. and the Georgia government.
The construction is aimed at building 280-MW hydropower plant, dam and two tunnels along the Nenskra River in the Svaneti region, a mountainous region in northwestern Georgia. When the construction is completed, the average annual power generation will be 1,219 GWh (Gigawatt-hours), which can be used by about 600,000 Georgians for one year.
It will be carried out through a turnkey way performed by the all process of the project, ranging from engineering, procurement to construction. Of a total of $ 737 million construction cost, Hyundai E&C has a 45 percent or $332 million,
The state-run Korea Water Resources Corp. will sell all of its electricity produced for 36 years after the completion of the power plant to Georgia Electric Power Corp. to gain operational profits and then hand over operational authority to the Georgia government.
It is the first BOT (Build-Operate-Transfer) contract-type project in Georgia. BOT refers to an order-receiving method that a company mobilizes fund, constructs it and operates until a certain period.
"To diversify overseas markets, we achieved our first successful advance into Georgia after Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Brazil and Chile," a Hyundai E&C official said. "In the future, we will strive to expand our orders by diversifying markets such as the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), Latin America, and Africa."