The GCC region has some 857 plastic products manufacturing plants with a total investment of $3 billion, a research official with a Gulf think tank has said.

Plastic manufacturing in the region advanced rapidly with the emergence in the mid-1980s of downstream petrochemical industries, said Dr Lulua Abdullah Al Misnad, an official in charge of investment promotion and research at the Doha-based Gulf Organisation for Industrial Consulting (Goic).

In the 1950s the region had only a limited number of small plastic manufacturing plants that entirely depended on imported raw materials, said Al Misnad in remarks at the opening of a course organised by Goic for upgrading skills in the plastics industry.

Twenty-five participants from around the GCC attended the course conducted by Deependra Singh and Subbiyah Sugumar from the Chennai-based Central Institute of Plastics Engineering and Technology (CIPET) in India.

Al Misnad observed that plastics manufacturing was an important activity in view of the fact that it provided added value for petrochemicals produced in the region.
The plastics skills course was among some 60 training courses that Goic has organised so far in fields related to industrial development.

The course covered a wide range of topics, including the types of manufactured plastic, sectors that utilise the product, important raw materials and implementation of quality standards in manufacture.