Abu Dhabi Basic Industries Corporation (Adbic) is gearing up for a major role in the region with the setting up of a polymer park, a specific industrial zone for plastic value-added products.
Abu Dhabi-based Adbic is a government-owned company with a private sector operating mechanism.
The company has set massive expansion plans for Emirates Steel Industries and will invest billions of dirhams to boost the emirate’s steel and plastic industry and set a model for cluster economies, a top official was quoted as saying in Emirates Business.
“We are going to launch what we call a Polymer Park. We use polymer resin from companies like Borouge and other suppliers further up the Gulf. It will be a business park, a very large one at about 4 sq km in Mussafah,” said Dr Jim White, chief operating officer of Adbic.
“Investors would be encouraged to put their money there. What we would like to do over the next five years is to grow a community of businesses that just convert plastic resins into plastic goods. They can share services and co-operate with each other. It is a classic cluster business model,” he noted.
He said Adbic would act as the developer of the park, which was likely to be operational in five years.
“We will co-invest with people in their factories, if they want that. We think we will create something unique in this park. We can only think of one similar example in the world and that is in Taiwan where they have a very large business park,” Dr White noted.
He said the company was trying to help the country build industrial pyramids.
“A pyramid is a mega project at the top, typically billion-dollar plus. In the middle are industries that convert raw materials – an example of that is plastic pellets made into plastic products. And then at the bottom of the pyramid are small and medium-sized enterprises and there are some industries to the side, service industries that can help us,” he explained.
For Adbic, the three pyramids were steel, aluminum and petrochemicals, Dr White said.
About investments, the official said Adbic would spend about a billion dollars during 2007 and 2008 with a large part of that being bank debts. A third of it would be shares with the rest raised from banks. Investment would mainly be in steel and plastic fabrication.
Dr White took over as Adbic’s chief operating officer in October 2006 when the corporation was set up.
A professional chemist, he has spent most of his life working in various parts of the world for British Petroleum. He has also advised Arab investors.
