Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (Sabic) has signed a contract with Technip Italy for the engineering, procurement and construction of an ethylene and propylene plant at the Yansab Complex in Yanbu Industrial City, on the Red Sea coast of Saudi Arabia.
The company also signed a contract with Japanese Toyo Engineering Corporation (TEC) for the engineering, procurement and construction of an ethylene glycol plant at the same site.
Singning the contracts were Yousef Al-Zamel, Sabic vice president for basic chemicals and chairman of Yansab; Nello Uccelletti, CEO, Middle East and Southeast Asia at Technip Italy, and Kenji Soejima of TEC. Present were Mohamed Al-Mady, Sabic vice chairman and CEO, and Yutaka Yamada, TEC president and CEO.
“The signing of these two contracts is a significant boost towards the major implementation of operations at the Yansab affiliate which is expected to become one of the world’s largest petrochemical industrial complexes,” said Al-Mady.
He added that Yansab would enhance Sabic’s competitive capabilities with production starting in 2008.
Yansab is the most recent Sabic affiliate in Saudi Arabia and will be the company’s largest petrochemical complex with an annual capacity exceeding 4 million tonnes of various petrochemical products including 1.3 million tonnes of ethylene, 400,000 tonnes of propylene, 900,000 tonnes of polyethylene, 400,000 tonnes of polypropylene, 700,000 tonnes of ethylene glycol, 250,000 tonnes of benzene, xylene and toluene, and 100,000 tonnes of butene-1 and butene-2.
“Yansab uses the latest world-class state-of-the-art technologies in its plants, including Sabic licence-owned technologies such as the new high-tech process of converting aromatic compounds to benzene and the production of polyethylene,” said Al-Mady
The official also stated the company would create promising job opportunities for Saudis as the expectation was that it would need 1,500 staff in phase I and phase II.
Sabic owns 55 per cent of Yansab’s capital. Its affiliates Ibn Rush and Tayf hold 10 per cent of the share. Sabic has announced plans to allocate the remaining 35 per cent for public subscription.
Headquartered in Riyadh, Sabic was founded in 1976 when the Saudi Government decided to use the hydrocarbon gases associated with its oil production as the principal feedstock for production of chemicals, polymers and fertilisers. The Saudi Government owns 70 per cent of Sabic shares with the remaining 30 per cent held by private investors in Saudi Arabia and other GCC countries.
Sabic is the largest public company in the Middle East, ranked by market capitalisation (more than $150 billion), and one of the world’s 10 largest petrochemicals manufacturers. The company is among the world’s market leaders in the production of polyethylene, polypropylene, glycols, methanol, MTBE and fertilisers as well as the fourth largest polymer producer.
Its profit rose to a record SR14.2 billion ($3.8 billion) in 2004, a 112 per cent increase on 2003 and the company’s highest profit since inception. Sales revenues for 2004 totaled SR68.5 billion, an increase of 47 per cent on revenues in 2003, making it the largest and most profitable public company in the Middle East.
