Singapore Corporate News - 9 Oct 2007

Keppel wins contract for Aussie project

KEPPEL Corporation's environmental engineering arm has won a contract to provide its technology and services to a consortium building a A$76 million (S$100 million) facility in Australia.

The new biosolids thermal drying facility is for Barwon Water, one of the largest water corporations in Victoria.

The facility will process the region's 54,000 tonnes of biosolids produced each year, providing sustainable biosolids management for Barwon Water.

It is being constructed by the Plenary Environment consortium.

The biosolids will be processed to maximise the potential for sustainable beneficial use, as a fossil fuel replacement or fertiliser.

Keppel Serghers, part of the Keppel Integrated Engineering (KIE) group, will provide a two-line thermal drying or pelletising installation to the plant.

Each line consists of a coater, a hard-pelletiser, a pellets recirculation system and a pellets cooling unit.

The thermal drying facility is part of Barwon's zero-waste water recycling philosophy with complete recycling of biosolids. It is due to be completed in 2009.

Keppel, which is trying to be one of the global leaders in solid waste treatment and management, recently won contracts in the Middle East and China.

Last month, Keppel Serghers won a $1.5 billion contract to design and build the largest greenfield wastewater treatment and water reuse facility in Qatar and operate and maintain the facility for 10 years.

It also won a $22 million contract last month to design, build and operate a wastewater treatment and reuse plant in Algeria.

KepLand to redevelop Ocean Building

KEPPEL Land will redevelop its Ocean Building and Ocean Towers office buildings into the new state-of-the-art Ocean Financial Centre (OFC), it said yesterday.

When completed in 2011, the 43-storey OFC will offer some 850,000 sq ft of prime Grade A office space.

Since KepLand owns the land OFC will come up on, it will only have to fork out for the development costs. Construction is expected to begin in the first quarter of 2008.
Ocean Building, which is now being demolished, has some 402,000 sq ft of net lettable area (NLA); Ocean Tower has another 229,000 sq ft.

The new centre will be built on land cleared when Ocean Building is demolished, integrating with Ocean Towers' podium.

Once OFC comes up, Ocean Towers' office block - which is above the podium - will then be taken down, said Tan Swee Yiow, KepLand's director of Singapore commercial.

He said that tenants in Ocean Towers as well as past tenants in Ocean Building have shown interest in taking up space at the OFC.

Ocean Building's major tenants included financial companies Credit Suisse, Ernst & Young and HSBC, while big tenants at Ocean Towers included law firm Drew & Napier and DMG & Partners Securities.

Ascendas to build, manage $98m development in IBP

BUSINESS space provider Ascendas will build and manage a new $98 million development in International Business Park (IBP) in Singapore, the company said yesterday. It was awarded the contract for the development by industrial landlord JTC Corporation.

When completed by the end of 2009, the development will have close to 42,000 square metres of high-tech space to help meet the market demand for high-quality business space, which is in short supply at the moment.

The proposed business park development will have two 12-storey blocks connected by sky bridges. 'It will offer emerging high-tech, high value-added industries and knowledge-intensive businesses a high-quality working environment with reliable infrastructure support,' Ascendas said in a statement.

To create vibrancy and 'life' in IBP, the project will inject a good mix of food court, F&B outlets, alfresco dining, childcare services, self-service banking lobby and convenience stores.

Sky gardens and regular lunchtime events and art exhibitions will be present to inject the concept of 'play' into the development and cater to the larger community within IBP.

The project will be energy efficient, incorporating extensive green features such as a feature roof for solar panels. These are expected to improve energy efficiency by 30 per cent, generating annual savings of about $250,000.

Upon completion of the project, Ascendas will manage the development, including all aspects of project management, marketing, lease management, property management, advertising and corporate services. The company also currently manages other projects within IBP.