Dubai, UAE - June 18, 2007--Stellar, the premier design builder for district cooling systems, announced today that it has started pumping chilled water to air conditioning systems throughout Palm Jumeirah's Shoreline Apartments. The district cooling plant is owned by Palm District Cooling and located underground on the Palm Jumeirah Trunk. The AED150 million cooling plant was fit out by Stellar in under 11 months; well in advance of the industry norm. The Trunk unit is the first district cooling plant to be operational within the whole Palm Jumeirah project.   

"While we are excited about our achievement, we are also thankful to Palm District Cooling for the opportunity to take on this unique project. Palm District Cooling, Nakheel, and DEWA's cooperative efforts were key to making this project and especially its timeframe a reality," commented Ivan Norris, the General Manager of Stellar. Stellar only began actual work on site last August in an underground structure provided by Nakheel.

Capable of serving over 2,000 apartments, the underground plant was designed to be eco-friendly and extremely reliable. Among other benefits for both the developer and residents of Shoreline Apartments, the plant room will be hidden below ground.  The company will be equipping another district cooling plant on the Trunk once the demand of the Trunk outgrows this first plant.

"We are pleased to offer this aesthetically friendly solution for the Palm Jumeirah residents and chose Stellar to build our plant because of the importance of this prestigious development and the urgent need for chilled water this summer," commented Keith Levers, COO of Palm Utility, parent company to Palm District Cooling.

To handle the job as efficiently and cost effectively as possible, Stellar engineering team used the company's distinctive modular approach to overcome some of the limitations imposed by the plant location just below the Palm access bridge. Stellar pre-fabricated large portions of the plant in an offsite quality controlled environment to ease the logistical operations and save time.

"Our modular approach proved to be successful at the operational level once again," commented Norris. "It was very important for us to meet our deadlines without allowing any challenges to postpone our delivery date. Building our modules off-site allowed us to eliminate access and logistics challenges that could have been created in an area with so many construction activities happening at once"

"Stellar was able to start working on key components of the district cooling plant even before a site for the District Cooling plant was confirmed, this helped us meet strict timing requirements.  Palm District Cooling will soon utilize this modular approach for temporary chilling packages to satisfy cooling loads when clients want chilled water faster than a traditional district cooling plant can be built," said Shafiq Khoori, Managing Director of Palm District Cooling.

Nakheel's decision to use district cooling in its developments supports Dubai's vision of environmentally-friendly real estate development. District Cooling is known to be the right choice for environmentally friendly air conditioning networks associated with mega projects.

District cooling centralizes the production of chilled water and then pumps the chilled water to multiple apartments, villas or offices via underground pipes to be used for air conditioning.

Stellar has been instrumental in the growth of District Cooling worldwide. Since its debut in 1985, Stellar has worked in various locations around the globe, providing efficient, cost effective district cooling solutions and has been active in the region since 2003. Stellar has clients in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, UAE and Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Stellar is also the sole provider of district cooling plants for Nakheel's Jumeirah Lakes Towers development; which will encompass over one hundred high rise buildings.

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About Stellar
Stellar is a premier engineering, construction and mechanical services company that delivers turnkey projects throughout the Middle East and North Africa. Stellar provides solutions from concept to completion for district cooling plants and systems, turbine inlet air chilling systems, cold storage facilities, and food processing plants.  Stellar also prefabricates and delivers modular chiller plants that can be installed quickly to meet urgent cooling needs and expanded to satisfy growing cooling loads.  Stellar directly employs an experienced staff in the Middle East that can provide complete design, construction management, procurement, fabrication and commissioning for multi-site and multiyear projects.  

This press release was issued by The Catevo Group Middle East and Africa on behalf of Stellar Middle East. For further resources or media inquiries, please contact Jihad A. Soaileek at +971-4-3642660, or press@catevo.com

© Press Release 2007