JEDDAH – The plastic industry in Middle East has phenomenal growth rate, further investment and industrial development opportunities that makes it attractive for investors to grab a pie of their market share. In fact substantial investment projects that are currently developing in the country makes Saudi Arabia the largest producer of polyethylene and the largest market for plastics manufacturing in the region. Several Jubail and Yanbu projects of Saudi Basic Industries Corp. (SABIC) worth SR81.44 billion ($21.72 billion) in total under the corporate strategic investment program ending in 2020 were initiated earlier. Meanwhile, Kuwait is fourth within GCC region in the production petrochemicals, said President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of EQUATE Mohammad Hussein on Monday. In a press statement, Hussein said Kuwait petrochemical production was around six percent of the total world production last year. Saudi Arabia came in first with 68 percent, followed by Qatar and Oman, each producing 13 percent of the total global production in 2012, revealed Hussein. EQUATE, established in 1995, represents a global partnership. It started production in November of the year 1997. Currently, it is the sole only operator of an integrated group of companies of international standards that produce more than five million tons of high quality petrochemicals annually, to be marketed in the Middle East, Africa and Europe Broadening on the current growth of plastic industries, Fleming Gulf conferences will be hosting the Kingdom Polymers & Plastic Summit, on Dec. 8-10, 2013 at Sofitel in Al-Khobar. It will create a platform to bring forth latest production and technological updates in plastic manufacturing and apprise on future market applications on a global level. The summit has pre-conference workshops and one of them is on technical analysis & applications of ethylene vinyl acetate. The key topics of the conference are growth enablers & innovation of plastics industry, overview and troubleshooting challenges of kingdom‘s downstream sector, better understanding the rheological properties to optimize process and functionality and future potential of nano-packaging materials. — SG
