Qurain Petrochemical Industries Company (QPIC) is planning to build a $1bn petrochemical complex in the industrial city of Al-Jubail in Saudi Arabia to produce purified terephthalic acid (PTA) and polyethylene terephthalate (PET).
The complex will obtain paraxylene raw materials from a local refinery and produce approximately 800,000pa of PET and 1Mtpa of PTA, of which minor amounts will be supplied to local markets and the remainder will be transferred to the downstream conversion industry in Saudi Arabia to produce PET resin.
The transformed PET resin will be utilised to produce bottle pre-forms, sheet and films for the packaging of food and consumer goods.
IHS was selected as the prime contractor to aid in the planning and development of the petrochemical complex project.
Qurain chairman Sheikh Mubarak Abdullah Al Mubarak Al Sabah said that this is a major investment project for QPIC and they wanted to secure the services of an industry leader such as IHS to develop their project implementation strategy with speed and confidence.
"Jubail industrial city in Saudi Arabia's Eastern province is home to one of the great petrochemical clusters of the world with highly developed infrastructure and access to competitive hydrocarbon feedstock; the city provides an advantaged location for major petrochemical investments," Al Sabah added.
QPIC is engaged in a wide variety of projects including Equate, Olefins II, Aromatics and Styrene in Kuwait, and is actively surveying local, regional and international markets as part of its long-term strategy.
QPIC also invests directly and indirectly in companies that trade and store chemical and petrochemical products and related by-products, including but not limited to benzene, paraxylene, light naphtha, hydrogen, light ends, heavy aromatics, styrene, ethylene glycol, ethane and methanol.
United Industries Company, a KIPCO Group company, holds the majority of stake in QPIC.
