Italian engineering group MAIRE has secured a major breakthrough in West Africa, announcing that its technology arm NEXTCHEM has been awarded contracts worth €485 million to develop three world-scale chemical complexes.
The awards cover licensing, process design packages (PDP), and the supply of critical equipment — all built on NEXTCHEM’s proprietary technologies.
The projects include two massive nitrogen fertilizer complexes dedicated to urea granule production and a third plant integrating ammonia and methanol co-production. Of the total contract value, €10 million related to engineering activities already underway will be booked during the pre-Final Investment Decision (FID) phase, with the balance to be recognized at FID.
The two fertilizer plants will feature four hydrogen units powered by NEXTCHEM’s NX AdWinHydrogen autothermal reforming (ATR) technology, four ammonia units using NX STAMI Ammonia technology, four urea-melt trains, and six urea-granulation units based on NX STAMI Urea technology.
Combined, the complexes are expected to produce more than 3 million tons of urea per year.
The NX AdWinHydrogen ATR system is designed to efficiently generate syngas at the scale required for major downstream production. NX STAMI Ammonia technology supports large-scale ammonia output with a focus on reliability and flexibility, while NX STAMI Urea technology cuts steam consumption, boosts energy efficiency, and delivers high-quality urea granules.
The third complex will produce more than 900,000 tons per year of ammonia and over 600,000 tons per year of methanol. At its core is NEXTCHEM’s ATR-based NX AdWin Combined technology — a high-pressure system enabling sequential or parallel production of methanol and ammonia within a single large-scale unit.
Both NX AdWinHydrogen and NX AdWin Combined were developed by GasConTec, NEXTCHEM’s subsidiary focused on low-carbon hydrogen and methanol solutions.
Fabio Fritelli, Managing Director of NEXTCHEM, commented: “This is a landmark award, which leverage on NEXTCHEM’s integrated expertise across the hydrogen, ammonia, urea, and methanol value chains. It reinforces our position as a leading technology partner for large, integrated industrial projects, demonstrating the scalability and complementarity of our proprietary technologies.”
