Guyana’s oil sector is set to benefit from the construction of a 20,000 square foot manufacturing facility, resulting from a joint venture between Guyanese owned Global Infrastructure Solutions Guyana Inc. and Emirati owned Unidome Global DWC LLC.
The US$5 million partnership facilitated by Guyanese focused merchant bank Smart City Clearing Company, is the first joint venture between Guyana and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Smart City considers the project a critical building block as Guyana pursues an aggressive plan of building a deepwater harbor, a gas-to-energy pipeline, shore bases and industrial zones.
In a release announcing the venture, Smart City said, “The US$5 investment will allow for the ability to create Unidome’s state of the art biaxial voided slab technology in Guyana which will be used to help build and develop key infrastructure needed for the development of Guyana’s burgeoning oil and gas industry.”
Smart City said the technology used by Unidome helps limit construction related Carbon Dioxide (CO2) emissions by decreasing the amount of concrete needed in projects as the slabs are lighter and allow for greater distance between a building’s structural columns.
“One container of Unidome eliminates 30 truckloads of concrete which helps to reduce construction costs by almost 30% and greatly reducing the amount of C02 emissions that each new project generates,” Smart City said in its release.
Steven Jasmin, Managing Director of Smart City Clearing Company Ltd. and its affiliate Sc3 Guyana Inc. added, “Unidome’s cost effective and environmentally friendly technology both will help reduce the cost of infrastructure development while simultaneously helping to foster Guyana’s net zero emission goals”.
As for Guyana’s Chief Investment Officer Dr. Peter Ramsaroop, he said that with many shore bases coming online and over 2,000 hotel rooms in development, technologies like Unidome and partnerships with companies like Global Infrastructure Solutions Guyana Inc. are critical to the country’s long term success.
The signing ceremony for the project was held on Tuesday at Unidome’s global MENA headquarters. Signing was done by the companies’ two chief executive officers, Troy Phillips for Global Infrastructure and Khalid Al-Qaqa for Unidome.
Phillips said, “Global Infrastructure Solutions is honored to take part in this historic event as we work together to bring best practices and unique technologies to Guyana”.
The signing was also witnessed by Guyanese and Emirati government representatives.
The agreement comes at a time when Guyana is facing a construction boom and is pushing its local mining sector to ramp up production of aggregate. Increasing demand for aggregate forced the country to have to import over 200,000 tonnes in 2020 because miners did not produce enough. Further to this, the government is in a race to hand out enough mining permits and influence the private sector to build more concrete plants.
