PolymerOhio Transfers World-Class Value to Plastics Valley Project in Saudi Arabia

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--PolymerOhio (Westerville, Ohio), the resource firm associated with more than the 2,800 facilities and 140,000 personnel in Ohio's polymer industry, has joined with global venture company StrateSphere Enterprises and the Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority in signing a memorandum of understanding with planning and development firm Emaar The Economic City (SAU:4220) (Jeddah, Saudi Arabia) to develop the King Abdullah Economic City (KAEC) Plastics Valley project.

KAEC has six components and is the largest private sector project in the region. Work on the first phase is already moving on a fast track schedule. When completed, KAEC will include a sea port, industrial zone, central business district, educational zone, resort district and residential communities. International investments of more than $8.5 billion are forecast to come into the zone. The project leased more than 800,000 square meters of land in 2007. Emaar CEO Fahd Al-Rasheed said the project is in line with the investment authority's vision of making Saudi Arabia one of the top 10 most competitive economies in the world. The Plastics Valley project would create jobs and help to develop ancillary industries, complementing the goal of ushering in socio-economic prosperity, he said.

In early July, the Savola Group (SAU:2050) (Jeddah), a leader in the local and international plastics-packaging industry, signed a memorandum of understanding with Emaar through its subsidiary Savola Packaging Systems. The Savola Group aims to become a strategic partner in conducting studies to identify product lines and determine raw material prices, optimum volumes, and capacities, as well as in product research and development for the project.

PolymerOhio will play a key role in KAEC's development, representing the state's standing as a global leader in polymers and advanced materials. Al-Rasheed said the memorandum of understanding will ensure that the knowledge base of Ohio's plastics manufacturers is transferred to KAEC's plastics industries. He said the association was eve more significant, given the advances that PolymerOhio had made in sustainable thinking and strategies for the plastics industry. These practices would serve as a model for KAEC to develop Plastics Valley, he said.

Ohio will look to benefit from the innovative shape of the association with the project by transferring added value technological knowledge into an area possessing major financial development stamina. In a recent Reuters poll of 14 economists, it was reported that the nominal GDP of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and four other Gulf oil producers would boom by almost 33% in 2008 from $821.1 billion in 2007 to $1.08 trillion, representing a growth in GDP of more than 300% since 2002. As with all the regional oil-price windfall states, Saudi Arabia has been investing in industries beyond the traditional hydrocarbon extraction and processing sector into a range of industries and services.

Details of the collaboration between PolymerOhio, StrateSphere and Emaar will be announced at the Global Competitiveness Forum in Riyadh in January 2009.

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