Neom cancels contracts on construction at The Line and Trojena

A pair of companies have announced the cancellation of contracts to deliver work on the Trojena ski resort and The Line city as the Neom project in Saudi Arabia stalls.

Steel company Eversendai announced this week that its structural steel contract for Neom’s Trojena ski village, which is under construction in Saudi Arabia‘s mountainous Tabuk region, had been terminated.

Hyundai Engineering and Construction also recently announced that its contract with Samsung Construction and Trading and contractor Archirodon to construct a tunnel for The Line was cancelled.

The cancelled contracts come as momentum on the Neom project appears to have stalled.

The steel contract for Trojena was originally awarded to Eversendai and Saudi construction company Al Bawani in March 2024, and the ski resort was initially slated to be completed this year.

The termination follows reported construction delays on Trojena and the news that it will no longer host the 2029 Asian Winter Games, which will instead take place in the city of Almaty in Kazakhstan.

Trojena was masterplanned by German architecture studio LAVA and was set to contain buildings designed by UNStudio, Zaha Hadid Architects, and Aedas.

Eversendai said that its work in the Middle East remains stable amid strikes across the region in the ongoing war between Iran, the US and Israel. However, it suspects that the conflict played a part in Neom cancelling its contract.

“Until the date of the notice, Eversendai had fully committed and delivered the project as per the contractual obligations with no compromise to safety and quality and we believe this has happened due to the current geopolitical situation in the Middle East,” said Eversendai.

“Operations in the Middle East remain stable despite the current geopolitical situation,” it continued. “We remain highly optimistic in securing more projects across the group to further improve our financial performance going forward.”

Neom originally awarded its now-cancelled tunnel contract to Hyundai Engineering and Construction in June 2022.

It involved a 12.5-kilometre underground tunnel section that would form part of the transport infrastructure for The Line, a megacity that has been significantly scaled back from its original design.

Plans for the 170-kilometre-long city to house 1.5 million residents by 2030 were scaled back in 2024 to 300,000 people by 2030. Last year, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund asked consultants to conduct a review of the feasibility of The Line.

The images are courtesy of Neom.