Midland Power, a local joint venture, yesterday signed an agreement with Rolls-Royce Bergen Engines AS to set up a plant at Ashuganj in Brahmanbaria that will generate 150 megawatt of electricity.

The UK-based Rolls-Royce will supply machinery and offer technical support to Midland to set up the Tk 800-crore plant scheduled to go into operations by March next year. David Hasanat, chairman of Midland Power, and Jeff Elliott, managing director of Rolls-Royce Bergen Engines, signed the deal in Dhaka for the furnace oil-based power plant.

Elliot said Rolls-Royce is now supporting power plants in Bangladesh that are producing 716MW of electricity. Some other units to generate 450MW, including the 150MW of Midland Power, will start production soon.

He said Rolls-Royce, which has been in Bangladesh for the last 15 years and has an office in Dhaka, aims to raise the power generation capacity to more than 1,100MW in the next two years. “The level of business growth in Bangladesh is very high.”

Midland is a joint venture of Viyellatex Group and Shahjibazar Power, a sister concern of Youth Group. It is an independent power producer and has been supplying 51MW to the national grid since 2013.