A street in Yanbu Industrial City near factories
As Yanbu Industrial City looks to intensify expansion into Phase-2, the Royal Commission tasked with overseeing development there is confident the city will maintain its role as a world centre for crude oil transshipment and the manufacture and export of hydrocarbon and petroleum products.
“Yanbu’s industrial development to date is impressive and its future is very promising,” the Royal Commission for Jubail and Yanbu said. Describing Yanbu as a dynamic industrial centre, the Royal Commission said it was “the cornerstone of Saudi Arabia’s manufacturing economy and a catalyst to stimulate the kingdom’s economy.”
Companies in Yanbu Industrial City’s Phase-1 have totally invested SR96.53 billion ($25.73 billion), according to the Royal Commission. Already functioning are 82 firms while 32 others are under construction. Another 28 are in the design or proposal stage. Fourteen of the operating companies are classified as primary industries and 19 as secondary with light industries listing 49.
Seventeen of the operating firms are engaged in the business of petroleum products, 8 in chemical products, six in construction materials and four each in metals, food and gases. The remaining firms are involved in a variety of operations in fields including glass, power and water and service and maintenance.
Primary industries in Phase-1 account for the production of 412,000 barrels per day of petroleum products. Secondary industries produce 22.077 million tonnes of petroleum-based products per year.
Expansions at Phase-1
Among companies expanding capacities in Phase 1 is Sabic affiliate Ibn Rushd. A new PET (polyethylene terephthalate) plant will add capacity of 420,000 tonnes per year. Debottlenecking of the PTA (purified terephthalic acid) will double throughput to 700,000 tonnes annually. A new extraction unit will process yearly 1,300 tonnes of reformate. Aromatics debottlenecking will produce 460,000 tonnes per year of paraxylene and 160,000 tonnes per year of benzene. Additionally, there will be expansions and debottlenecking of utilities and OSBL (outside battery limit) facilities.
The Marafiq plant is also undergoing expansion. Two steam turbine generator units are being constructed to provide a total capacity of 500 MW. Also under construction are three seawater reverse osmosis desalination units with a capacity of 8,400 cu m per day of water each for a total of 25,200 cu m daily.
Phase-1’s ongoing projects
Red Sea Refining Company is in the process of building a plant to create products including gasoline, diesel, benzene, sulphur and coke. Total production will amount to 2.7 million tonnes annually. The plant will have a start up in 2014.
Red Sea Refining Company is listed as a primary company.
In the secondary industry category, Al-Obayan Float Glass Company will make float glass panels. Plant capacity will be 438,000 tonnes per year. The plant is almost complete.
Two other companies in the category will complete construction of their plants in 2011. They are Gulf Liquid Oil Factory for Oil Treatment and Industry Cores Co Ltd.
Companies under construction in the category of light and support industries include Al Biariq for Potassium Sulphate, Alami Vegetable Oil, Al Fayrooz Factory for Comforters and Pillows, Al Fozan Wood Industries, ASK International Gypsum Factory (expansion), Faisal Fayyad Bin Farraj for Detergents and Faisal Fayyad Farraj Plastic Pipe, Mechema Chemicals International, Metal Supporting Work Factory, Precast Technology Company Ltd (previously Mada Precast Company), Red Sea Cables Factory, Saudi Hepco (expansion) and Yanbu Industrial Packing.
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An industrial sprowl in Yanbu |
Yanbu-2
So far 11 companies have registered in Yanbu-2 of which five are operating including one in the primary industry category – Saudi Armco Lube Oil Refinery (Luberef) – and four in the secondary category, namely Cristal, Alhamrani-Fuchs, Yamamah Steel and Al Murjan.
The Luberef refinery produces lubricating oil stocks used in the manufacture of lube oil blends. The plant receives 2.77 million barrels per day of reduced crude oil from Saudi Aramco’s Yanbu refinery and produces 2 million barrels per day of four lube oil basestocks for blending into finished products. The company is expanding with the introduction of a lube hydrocracker to produce a Type 3 lubricating oil, a base oil unique to the region.
Cristal includes subsidiary Arabian Chlorine Company’s chlorine plant producing chlorine gas which is consumed entirely by Cristal. The Cristal plant produces titanium dioxide from rutile ore imported from Australia. Titanium dioxide is manufactured through the chlorination process where rutile reacts with chlorine and coke at high temperature in a fluidised bed reactor. The plant was expanded recently to increase capacity to about 190,000 tonnes per year of titanium dioxide.
The Alhamrani-Fuchs Petroleum plant manufactures over 500 different blends of automobile, industrial and speciality lubricating oils and greases. Approximately 70 per cent of the products are consumed domestically and the balance is exported to 32 countries in the Middle East, East Africa and Southeast Asia. The plant receives about 90 per cent of its base oil stocks from Luberef and most of its additives from Lubrizol Transarabia.
Al Yamamah Steel’s rolling mill plant manufactures 600,000 tonnes per year of reinforcing steel bars with different steel grades and sizes ranging from 8 to 36 mm in diameter and 6, 12 and 18 m in length. The rolling mill consists of a hearth-type reheating furnace of 120 tonnes per hour and two high-speed finishing blocks. The raw material for the plant comes from continuous casting machines (CCMs). Al Yamamah plans to construct a steel making plant with a design capacity of 750,000 tonnes annually of steel billets and a direct reduced iron (DRI) plant with a design capacity of 800,000 tonnes per year. The steel-making plant will consist of an electric arc furnace, a ladle furnace and a CCM. The raw materials for the plant will be steel scrap and DRI produced by their DRI plant.
Al Murjan is an environmental services company engaged in storing waste and treating it.
Investment by companies now operating in Yanbu-2 amounts to SR3.93 billion.
Conditional site allocations have been made for the remaining six that have registered. They are Marafiq, which is setting up a power, desalination and seawater cooling project; Al Atoun Steel (a direct reduced iron unit), Adwan Chemicals (a silicate plant), Abdullah Haashim (a facility for industrial gases), Control Petroleum Gulf (PET and PTA units), and House of Invention (a complex for benzoic acid, sodium benzoate, toluene diisocyanate and methylene diphenylene diisocyanate.
House of Invention and Control Petroleum Gulf are expected to begin operations by the end of next year.
