Hassan Allam Holding, a privately held engineering, construction, and infrastructure firm co-led by Egyptian businessmen Hassan and Amr Allam, has expressed an interest in investing between $50 million and $150 million in Moroccan renewable energy and seawater desalination projects.
“We are ready to invest in Morocco alongside international partners who are ready to join us as investors,” Amr Allam, co-CEO of Hassan Allam Holding, told Asharq Business on the sidelines of the Choiseul Africa Business Forum in Casablanca, adding that the size of the investments will depend on the scale of renewables projects and the company’s stake in them.
“If we enter into a renewable energy plant with a capacity of 50 or 100 megawatts, the investment will range between 50 and 150 million dollars, depending on the size of the project and our share of it,” he said.
Hassan Allam Holding is one of the largest privately held corporations in Egypt, North Africa, and the Middle East, with more than 80 years of experience in engineering, procurement, construction, building materials, and utilities.
The engineering and construction firm is co-led by Egyptian businessmen Amr and Hassan Allam, who have both played important roles in its rapid growth. The firm’s present construction backlog exceeds EGP55 billion ($2.8 billion) under their leadership.
The construction firm joins Egypt’s second-richest man Naguib Sawiris, who expressed an interest in investing $100 million in Morocco’s technology sector on the sidelines of the Casablanca forum, to diversify his portfolio and deepen his position in the sector.
“We will enter the Moroccan market, in the coming years, if we find an open field in which there is no great competition,” Sawiris said, noting that he will not engage in a project in Morocco that calls for investments of more than $100 million in the first stage.
The planned investment represents 2.94 percent of his $3.4-billion net worth at the time of writing this report.
