SABIC committed to realising full potential of its Teesside business

Oct 30 2007 by Steve Race, Evening Gazette

WHEN Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (SABIC) acquired the former Huntsman UK Petrochemicals business at the end of 2006, it signalled the start of a tremendously challenging new era for the chemical industry on Teesside.

The completion of the £350m deal on December 29, 2006, marked the arrival of SABIC - one of the world’s top 10 global chemical industry forces - well and truly on the Teesside process industry scene.

Since then, the 900 people employed directly in the business have been extremely busy going through an intensive programme of integration to be become fully incorporated within the SABIC Europe business, which is headquartered in Sittard in the far south of The Netherlands.

The new Teesside operations of SABIC have been renamed SABIC UK Petrochemicals, a strategically important manufacturing base for SABIC Europe, which has a total of over 3,300 employees, including those based at the Wilton International and North Tees sites on Teesside.

One of the first pledges SABIC made when it completed the purchase of the business from Huntsman was to commit up to $150m to ensure the completion of the major new world-scale polyethylene project, started under Huntsman’s ownership.

Work on this vitally important project continues apace, with completion and start-up expected during the second quarter of 2008. In addition to the polyethylene project, SABIC is also studying the feasibility of building a new polypropylene plant somewhere in Europe, with Wilton seen as a key potential location.

SABIC vice chairman and chief executive officer, Mohamed Al-Mady, said in January of this year: “The acquisition of Huntsman’s UK business is a major addition to the SABIC Europe group of companies and to SABIC’s business overall. This deal demonstrates our commitment to growing the SABIC business and the success of our globalisation strategy.”

Boy Litjens, chief executive officer of SABIC Europe, added: “We are fully committed to realising the full potential of the business we have bought from Huntsman, and therefore we intend to invest and grow the business in the future, including the continued construction of the new polyethylene plant.

“We are fortunate to have acquired a talented and committed workforce on Teesside, whom we welcome into the SABIC family. The important task over the next few months is the alignment and integration of the new business within our SABIC Europe organisation.”

Over the past few months, employees in the new SABIC UK Petrochemicals business have been working extremely hard not just on helping to consolidate the Teesside operations within SABIC, but also on looking for opportunities to exploit the synergies which clearly exist since becoming part of the global SABIC family.

Staff have also been putting a lot of effort into the manufacturing operations across Teesside, with major overhauls taking place on the Aromatics complex at North Tees, and the Paraxylene plant and Gasoline Treatment Unit at Wilton. A lot of technical effort has also gone into bringing about various process improvements.

And on top of all of that, SABIC UK Petrochemicals has recently been re-awarded the nationally-recognised Investors in People award after successfully completing the three-year review in July. This review is essential in order for a company to retain the Certificate of Recognition for the efforts it makes to train and develop its staff.