The Abu Ghraib Concrete Sleeper Factory was declared open on Monday, 29th of November, 2010 by the Iraqi Minister of Transport, H.E. Amer Abdul Jabbar Ismail. An official opening ceremony was prepared to welcome the Minister and his delegation; attendants were then shown a demonstration of the factory’s manufacturing capabilities. Following years of rehabilitation and preparation, the factory is now ready to commence production of pre-stressed mono-block concrete sleepers. The facility was modernised in partnership between the State Company for Implementation of Transport and Communication Projects and Al-Burhan Group. The Minister of Transport gave a speech during which he praised Al-Burhan Group on 'all of their efforts and investment which has led to the factory finally seeing the light of day thus becoming operational.'

The Iraqi Ministry of Transport announced the occasion on their website.

The end users of the sleepers will be Iraqi Republic Railways (IRR), which has a 5 year plan to modernise and expand the national railway network from 2,000 km to 10,000 km; this scheme will require over 20 million concrete sleepers either for replacement or for new line construction. The Abu Ghraib factory is scheduled to provide a significant proportion of these requirements. The factory currently produces 1,400 concrete sleepers per day with an imminent planned expansion of production to 2,800 per day. This will allow IRR to lay 1.5 km of railway track per day. There are plans to eventually expand production in Abu Ghraib to 5,000 concrete sleepers per day which will allow the laying of 3 km of track per day. IRR’s plans include an extension of the Basra, Baghdad & Mosul railway line which will connect the whole of Iraq to the Umm Qasr Port Terminal in the south, which will allow for the fast and efficient export of cargo from Iraq to Europe.

The factory is located in Abu Ghraib, west of Baghdad. The factory site covers an area of 60 acres and is the largest concrete sleeper factory in the Middle East. Globally, the factory belongs to the 5 largest facilities in the world. The latest technology machines; have been imported from SKAKO / Denmark and RMS / UK which specialises in the manufacture of concrete sleeper production equipment. The factory was originally constructed by Dow-Mac (UK) in 1982 and ran production up until 2003. Following years of neglect and stagnation; Al-Burhan Group took it upon itself to rehabilitate the factory at a cost of $25 million. This included the installation of a sophisticated concrete batching plant provided by SKAKO (who incidentally built the original plants two decades ago).

The Abu Ghraib factory will play a prominent role in the modernisation of Iraq’s national railway network. The nation is undergoing tremendous economic advancements in every sector creating great demand for heavy cargo transportation throughout the territory. Similarly, Iraq’s population is growing and is projected to continue doing so, again creating massive passenger transportation requirements. IRR’s modernisation and expansion programme has been created to meet these unprecedented demands on the national rail infrastructure. Al-Burhan Group is proud to play a part in these vital projects works and will continue working to serve the nation of Iraq.