Contract awardRefining, petrochemicals and fertilisers
Saipem signs approximately €700 million Priolo biorefinery EPC contract
The Sicilian project targets 500,000 tonnes per year of flexible SAF-biojet and HVO-diesel production capacity.
- Event
- First published on EPC Feed
- Sources
- 1 listed below
- Reading time
- 2 min
Saipem signed the main contract with Eni Industrial Evolution for the new Priolo biorefinery in Sicily, the company announced on 20 April 2026. The contract has a total value of approximately €700 million upon completion. Work is expected to finish by the end of 2028. The release identifies engineering, procurement and construction responsibilities for the main process units, establishing a defined delivery package within the wider biorefinery development.
Eni and Q8 Italia had announced the project on 3 February, according to the source. Saipem's April announcement concerns the subsequent construction-related contract, rather than the original project announcement or the start of commercial fuel production. Keeping those milestones separate is important because a development decision, an EPC agreement and an operating plant represent different stages of project execution, even when they concern the same site and intended output.
The new plant is designed for capacity of 500,000 tonnes per year. Saipem describes operational flexibility to produce SAF-biojet fuel and HVO-diesel. That figure is the stated capacity of the biorefinery and should not be assigned independently to each fuel category as though the release disclosed two separate plants, each with the same throughput. The product flexibility is part of the plant concept rather than evidence of actual production volumes already achieved.
The EPC scope covers detailed engineering, procurement of materials and construction of the principal units. These responsibilities connect process design with purchasing and physical delivery. The announcement does not disclose a separate price for each workstream or provide a detailed construction sequence for every unit. Its schedule is the contractor's stated expectation that the contracted work will be finished by the end of 2028, rather than a report that commissioning or fuel shipments had begun in April.
Saipem places Priolo within its continuing biorefining collaboration with Eni, referring to an agreement signed in 2023 and extended in 2025. That background explains the industrial relationship behind the award without changing the scope of the new contract. For project monitoring, the key disclosed parameters are the customer, the approximate package value, the annual plant capacity, the two intended fuel categories and the delivery target. Subsequent engineering, procurement, construction and operating milestones would need to be tracked separately as the Sicilian project moves towards completion.
Sources
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