• Within MENA’s US$200B construction sector market of which Iraq comprises ~US$15B there is growing opportunity for producers in Iraq to manufacture building materials for local and regional consumption
• Al Tiraz Al Sharqi ( ATS), a Baghdad based building materials trading company, proposes the establishment of an integrated gypsum mine and gypsum board factory in Anbar Province to help fill growing market demand in Iraq and the wider region
• With a mine site situated on 2.5 square kilometers of land rich with raw gypsum deposits , ATS expects to produce 40 million square meters of
wallboard (also known as drywall or plasterboard) each year. Additionally, it expects to produce ceiling board and the corresponding me ta l parts used to gird them. All told, ATS is poised to be one of the largest manufactured gypsum facilities in the Middle East
• ATS plans to sell its products to distributors , who will then sell to end users (typically large construction contractors or small builders) across Iraq. The country imports ~70% of its gypsum board overland from Turkey , so buying from a local producer like ATS could create transport cost savings for distributors and help improve their margins
• The company will focus its broader sales strategy in later operating years on distributors who have a footprint broader region in order to capture a share of the large and growing MENA gypsum board market, particularly in the Levant, Egypt, and the GCC
• The recent improvements in Anbar’s security situation since the end of the ISIS war, as well ATS’s highly competent and experienced management staff , will enable project success in a way that may not have been possible even five years ago
• ATS expects to generate revenues of ~US$31M in its first full year of production, a figure it expects to grow to over US$70M by Year Eight of production once it scales to full capacity
• Additionally, the project forecasts net margins that grow from ~20% in Year Two to ~40% in Year Eight , as well as an unlevered project IRR of 32%
