TOKYO. A consortium led by Japanese trading house Mitsui has bagged an order worth about 90 billion yen ($763 million) for a railway construction project in Saudi Arabia. Mitsui will team up with Saudi Arabia’s Al-Rashid Trading and Contracting Co. and Australia’s Barclay Mowlem to build an 818-kilometer portion of the North-South railway, which is to transfer minerals from Saudi Arabia’s interior to an industrial site that will be built on the Gulf coast. Construction of the project, overseen by the Saudi Ministry of Finance, is scheduled to last 43 months. Once completed, the railway will enable the transport of such materials as phosphate ore and bauxite to the processing and export base in Ras Al-Zour on the Gulf. The project is regarded as vital to Saudi Arabia’s ambitious 13.1 billion Saudi riyal ($6 billion) downstream oil and gas project, a fertilizer plant of similar value, and a 22.5 billion riyal aluminum smelter to be developed in Ras Al-Zour.

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