A 40-minute drive from Dammam lies Jubail, where a quiet revolution which started in Scotland just over three years ago is playing a pivotal role in helping to re-shape the future strategy of Saudi Arabia’s second largest petrochemicals plant.
The role played by Scottish company Impact Laboratories Limited in helping to mould and define the future development aspirations of Tasnee Petrochemicals in Jubail has its roots entrenched in Grangemouth, Scotland – home to that country’s indigenous petrochemicals industry.
Impact Laboratories was created by former employees of BP Chemicals around seven years ago, principally as a laboratory testing facility, but the scope of work has steadily broadened over the years with this expertise firmly sought after by the burgeoning Middle East petrochemicals industry. 
Impact’s strength is bringing many years’ industrial experience to the region where adapting new procedures and technologies to streamline efficiency are broadly welcomed. This has led to Impact securing a multi-million-dollar project management contract to build and develop a cutting-edge polymer research and technical centre for Tasnee, which is committing $30 million to the new R&D centre.
This polymer research and technical centre will complement Tasnee Petrochemicals’ multi-billion-dollar polyolefin complex (ethylene, polyethylene and polypropylene) and, from its formation just over three years ago, it has expanded to become the second largest polyolefin producer in Saudi Arabia.
 
Project management
Impact Laboratories has now scoped out the entire project management including the design layout and specification, equipment selection, commissioning, development and staff training. The complex will house nine laboratories equipped for physical and analytical testing, rheological and thermal analysis, molecular characterisation and microscopy and end-product pipe, film and container testing.
Rob Meek, CEO for Impact Laboratories, takes up the story.
“From these early negotiations and planning meetings in 2006 and 2007, we’ve worked closely with Tasnee to plan the entire first phase of the project which ranged from issues such as calculating how much space was required for the research and technical facility, the exact layout and what type of laboratories would be required to undertake the various testing procedures. Today, with the initial phase completed and the second project management phase underway, the construction contract has been awarded, the detailed design on the building has been completed, all the major equipment is ordered and some has been moved onto the site.
This construction phase includes a 3,000 sq m Machine Processing Hall equipped with the latest compounding and pipe extrusion lines, where leading-edge processing equipment will allow Tasnee to scale up from small laboratory-sized quantities/products to semi-commercial quantities/products and allow them to get close to customer production scale. Future developments on polyolefins will enable Tasnee to stay competitive, by being aware of new product development possibilities and inventing new polymer-based products.”
Tasnee has support from the Saudi Royal Commission which took a keen interest in the development. When the R&D Technical facility opens this autumn, it will initially recruit 50 people to work on Tasnee’s R&D programmes stretching well into next year.
 
Global ambitions
Much of Tasnee’s existing polypropylene is exported to Europe and India, and in terms of volume, the company has significant global ambitions to be a global leader in polyolefins – between all of its three Saudi plants.
It expects to produce  some 700,000 tonnes of polyproplynene and another 800,000 on polyethylene – a total volume that is significant in global terms.
Meek is delighted that this contract reaffirms Impact’s commitment to the growth of the Middle East petrochemical industry.
“This work with Tasnee is helping us to further demonstrate our capability across the Middle East, where we’ve been active for some time now. We’re taking our know-how harvested from our many years with BP Chemicals and applying it in the most rigorously demanding of environments. Tasnee’s strategy is to push the boundaries of its future research and development aspirations and we’re supporting this by adopting a multi-dimensional approach to give them the facilities which, we believe, exceed their expectations.” 
Since its founding in 2002, Impact has formed a team with both business and technical know-how to tackle, it says, almost any challenge across the polymer supply chain.