PowerChina says it is still scouting for land where the headquarters will be built.
The project is expected to take shape the next three years.
The firm is set to build the 981-megawatt Lamu coal power plant
Kenya’s high appetite for large infrastructure projects has attracted a Chinese power construction firm to set up a regional base in Nairobi.
PowerChina is set to announce the inauguration of its East and southern Africa regional headquarters in Nairobi next week, making it the latest multinational to choose Nairobi as a regional base.
The firm’s country manager, Zha Rui, Thursday said Nairobi was chosen due to its travel convenience as well as the country’s plans for huge infrastructure projects, creating a potential for future business for the firm.
“Ideally the headquarters would have been in South Africa, but Kenya has easier visa access as well as good climate and safety for us. We felt that the regional headquarters is important to speed up our decision making in the region as well,” Mr Rui said.
The firm said it was still scouting for land where the headquarters will be built with the project expected to take shape the next three years.
The headquarters will cover 26 countries in eastern and southern Africa, including Ethiopia, Kenya, Angola, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Tanzania and South Africa
PowerChina, which earned Sh5 trillion in 2016 in revenues, provides comprehensive and full-range of services from planning, investigation, designing, consulting, civil works construction to manufacturing services in the fields of hydropower, thermal power, new energy and infrastructure.
The firm is set to build the 981-megawatt Lamu coal power plant, which recently got the green light from the Energy Regulatory Commission.
The move to set up a regional base in Nairobi completes the Chinese firm’s consolidation of its international business in East and Southern Africa region.
The firm’s subsidiary, Sinohydro Corporation, has already undertaken several projects in the country including the Thika Road upgrade (lot 2), Emali-Oloitokitok Road and the and the Nzoia Water Supply System among others.
The Sinohydro Bureau is also undertaking the Kenya 192 Village Road project which is part of Power china’s "10,000km Road Construction Plan" from Bomet to Kericho.
The project with a total construction length of 63 kilometres, consists of a bidirectional one-lane route with a width of six meters plus a meter for a shoulder on each side.
The Power Construction Corporation of China was founded in September 2011 and has an annual capacity 15,000 megawatts of installation of turbine-generator units, one-million-tonne of metal fabrication works, five-million cubic metres of foundation grouting as well as 540,000 cubic meters of construction of impervious walls, according to the company’s profile.
By the end of January 2016, the firm had total assets of USD 77.1 billion ranking 200th in the Fortune Global 500 list of companies.
