Fresh from a year that included two multi-million dollar deals with the UAE’s biggest real estate developers, National Central Cooling Company (Tabreed) CEO, Bader Saeed Al Lamki, has revealed plans to target three key countries in 2021 – Saudi Arabia, India and Egypt.
Last week, it was announced that Aldar Properties had sold two of its district cooling assets on Abu Dhabi’s Saadiyat Island to Tabreed for AED963 million ($263m). It followed a deal completed in April where Tabreed bought Emaar Properties’ Downtown Dubai district cooling business, which was worth AED2.48 billion ($675.3m).
Al Lamki told Arabian Business it had been “a good year”, but there were no thoughts of resting on their laurels as the company, which has 83 district cooling plants, delivering over 1.342m refrigeration tons to key projects across the UAE, heads into 2021.
He said: “We will continue with the same financial discipline as well as operation excellence in a spirit of partnership with all our clients, existing clients and future clients.”
That includes potential growth opportunities in Saudi Arabia, India and Egypt, as well as building on the company’s presence in Bahrain and Oman, he said.
National Central Cooling Company (Tabreed) CEO, Bader Saeed Al Lamki
Last year, Tabreed acquired an additional eight percent stake in Saudi Tabreed, worth $34.4m, taking its ownership in the company up to 28 percent.
“We are not only focused on the UAE. Regionally we are very strong in Saudi Arabia. We are quite bullish about the Saudi Arabia market,” he said.
While the company has a “small office” now in Mumbai, “where we have boots on the ground and we are now scouting for projects, at the right time and when a real investment opportunity materialises, we will definitely take it to our investment committees”, he said.
In terms of Egypt, he added that Tabreed was “exploring opportunities”.
In reference to the three countries, he said: “The landscape there is quite attractive. They have the ingredients. The right ingredients for us is a highly dense population needing utilities such as cooling, which is now a necessity, it’s not a luxury, especially with this global warming that is happening.”
In October, Tabreed raised $500m with a new seven-year, 2.4 percent coupon bond issuance – 90 percent of investors came from the international market, with 49 percent from Europe, 21 percent from Asia and 20 percent from offshore US funds.
“This tells us that the Tabreed story is a solid story, it’s a story that is appreciated not only regionally but internationally. That’s also backed by over 22 years of operation and maintenance and growth,” said Lamki.
“We’re very much excited by all the happenings in the industry and the appetite is there for more,” he added.
Follow us on
