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wiredInUSA - August 2015
35
ASIA / AFRICA NEWS
INDEX
China’s State Grid has won the concession
to build and operate the second power
transmission line to connect the massive
Belo Monte hydropower plant to the
national Brazilian grid. Belo Monte's second
line will be Brazil’s longest, stretching
2,500km from the hydroelectric complex in
northern Para state, in the Amazon jungle,
to southeastern Rio de Janeiro.
The Chinese state-owned company, which
won the concession for the first line in 2013,
bid against Spain's Abengoa in the auction
for the project estimated to cost $2.21
billion. According to the auction's rules,
the company that offered to collect the
smallest annual amount on tariffs would
win.
StateGrid’s bidwas for acharge 19percent
below the maximum allowed.
The project is expected to be operational
by 2019.
Brazilian grid
growth
Furukawa Electric is to establish a new
manufacturing facility in Tangier, northern
Morocco– its first factory inAfrica. Furukawa
is to invest $8 million in developing the
unit, to satisfy the growing demand for
communications infrastructure in Africa.
Furukawa projects demand for fiber optic
cables in the African continent and the
Middle East to grow to 32 million kilometers
in 2018, an increase of 80 percent from 18
million kilometers in 2014.
The facility will assemble optic fibers, made
at the company’s US and Japanese plants,
into end products. With the opening of its
Morocco factory, Furukawa is thought to
be the first major company to produce the
cables in Africa.
Furukawa is said to control around 10
percent of the global fiber optic market,
behind Corning of the US and Prysmian of
Italy.
The company said that its choice of
Morocco was due to the country’s easy
access to the Mediterranean and the
Atlantic, as well as its high security level
and political stability.
Move to
Morocco