World’s largest domed performance-exhibition complex

Hanwha Engineering & Construction (Hanwha E&C), a global leading construction company based in Korea, successfully completed on May 30 the project of constructing the Philippine Arena, the world’s largest domed performance and exhibition complex in the Philippines near Manila. With a total floor space of 74,000 square meters and roof space of 35,950 square meters, the indoor arena can accommodate as many as 51,000 persons. It is three times larger in number of seats than the Olympic Gymnastics Arena in Seoul that has 15,000 seats.

Having successfully won the contract for the US$175 million-project in a competitive bidding vying with EEI, the largest construction company in the Philippines, and Giangsu International in China in 2011, Hanwha E&C completed the construction project in about 30 months on the design-build basis. In the tender, Hanwha E&C gained higher scores in technology capability than competitors, attributing to its sophisticated technologies and project capabilities accumulated for decades in Korea and other countries. In particular, its expertise for structure design of the roof along with construction ability was highly evaluated.

“Now that we have successfully completed construction of the largest domed indoor arena in the world, our ability of conducting large scale overseas construction projects and technology prowess are recognized in the international market,” said President Lee Geun-po of Hanwha E&C. “The Philippine Arena is expected to serve as a bridgehead for exploring opportunities of winning civil engineering and construction projects in Southeast Asia.”

Leveraging its ample experiences in chemical and power plants as well as in developing new towns amassed in Korea, the construction company aims to build stabilized business portfolio by aggressively expanding overseas markets and actively taking part in biddings for civil works, building and plant projects in public sector. With the new corporate vision of ‘Design the World’ recently declared by Chairman Kim Seung-youn of Hanwha Group, the company will establish a robust foundation for making a giant leap toward a comprehensive global construction company by concentrating resources on successful implementation of the US$8 billion-Bismayah New City Project in Iraq, for which it received the order in 2012. To that end, it initially targets to achieve 4.3 trillion won (approximately US$4.2 billion) in sales this year, and increase the proportion of overseas sales to 65% of its total revenue in 2015.

Since its inception in 1962, Hanwha E&C has been playing a key role in the construction industry in Korea, and it is rapidly growing as a global property development and construction company, with interests ranging from large-scale civil works projects to industrial plants and smart buildings, in Korea and international markets. It has been developing real estate projects in the United States for decades, and has been taking part in plant construction projects in Southeast Asia and the Middle East. With its extensive experience and unparalleled competitive edge in plant construction, it built a large number of plants, including chemical, petrochemical and power plants, in Asian and the Middle East countries.

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