Faced with high unemployment and rapidly expanding population, Saudi Arabia is eager to attract foreign investment and to diversify its economy away from oil. 'Awash in oil, gas and increasingly, resin', it hopes to become the new center for plastics converting. Rabigh Conversion Industrial Park (CIP), a project of Saudi Aramco and Sumitomo Chemical, forms a part of these plans. Located on the Red Sea coast adjacent to PetroRabigh, a worldscale petrochemical and refinery complex, Rabigh CIP wants to attract compounders and processors with competitive resin prices, a fixed electricity rate of roughly $0.03 kw/hr as well as multiple government incentives.

These and other inducements were presented during a one-day conference on June 13 in New York. Representatives from PetroRabigh Conversion Industrial Park (CIP) and the Saudi government discussed opportunities existing in Rabigh CIP and Saudi Arabia with their potential partners: coumpounders and processors from end markets as diverse as medical, automotive, and flexible packaging. The conference was preceded by a similar event in Riyadh on May 28. Two additional seminars will take place in London on Sept. 7 and in Düsseldorf on Oct. 25, followed by a business matching/networking seminar in Jeddah in December.

Source: Modern Plastics Worldwide
Calling all processors: PetroRabigh wants you