ACC wins hotel refit contract in Cairo

Saudi Arabian Mining Co., the state-controlled company known as Ma'aden, said it started commercial operations yesterday to produce diammonium phosphate at its Ras Al Khair plant. The phosphate project is now fully in commercial operation and the plant will gradually increase output to its designed capacity of 3 million tonnes a year, the company said in a statement to the Saudi bourse yesterday. El Sewedy Electric El Sewedy Electric Co., Egypt's biggest publicly traded manufacturer of electric cables, said a workers' strike over wages at its factories on the outskirts of Cairo won't affect business in the near-term. The company has excess capacity to offset the stoppage in the long term and is "optimistic" about resolving the strike, it said in a filing to the Egyptian bourse yesterday. El Sewedy won't negotiate pay increases implemented this year, it said. Paints & Chemical Paints & Chemical Industries Co., Egypt's biggest publicly traded paints producer, said its six-month profit dropped 41 per cent. Net income for the period that ended December 31 was 55.3 million Egyptian pounds compared with 93.5 million pounds a year earlier, the Cairo-based company said yesterday. ABB Electrical engineering company ABB Ltd yesterday said it has won orders worth more than $250 million from the Saudi Electricity Company to construct new substations and reinforce existing ones in the country to address growing electricity demand.