SearchFuture Plans and Investment
Change is everywhere; the only constant in our business is change. Our markets have evolved rapidly in response to volatile raw material prices, new feedstocks, and new manufacturing trends. The pandemic has accelerated many changes that were already underway in transportation, packaging, electronics, medical and healthcare, construction, and so on. Identifying and responding to these changes are crucial to SABIC’s growth agenda.
CREATING SHARED VALUE WITH SAUDI ARAMCO
Since Saudi Aramco’s acquisition of a 70% majority stake in SABIC in June 2020, both entities have been working together to explore areas of synergy that will maximize value and for their respective customers, stakeholders and shareholders. Since the deal closed, SABIC has achieved a synergy value of US$ 468 million. In the coming years, SABIC’s share in the value creation and synergy is expected to amount to recurring annual value of US$ 1.5 billion to US$ 1.8 billion, which SABIC expects to achieve by 2025. Approximately 80% of this value is set to be generated from six key business areas: Procurement, Sales and Marketing, Supply Chain, Stream Integration, Feedstock Optimization and Maintenance. The alignment with Saudi Aramco will also bring additional scale, technology, investment potential, and growth opportunities to SABIC. As part of the broader long-term strategy, there will be further opportunities to capture value through growth projects optimization, joint venture management and a one service delivery model.
CARBON NEUTRALITY
In 2021, we developed and unveiled our Carbon Neutrality Roadmap, which sets out a strategy to decarbonize our operations by 2050 in line with the goals of the Paris Agreement. The roadmap identifies five pathways to decarbonization: Reliability, Energy Efficiency and Improvements; Renewable Energy; Electrification; Carbon Capture; and Green/Blue Hydrogen. As major steps on this journey in 2021, SABIC established a groundbreaking partnership with chemical and industrial gas giants BASF and Linde to develop electrically powered steam cracker technology that will aim to reduce carbon emissions by 90%; announced plans to invest nearly US$ 1.37 billion in our Teesside petrochemical facility to develop a technical configuration to convert the steam cracker to blue hydrogen at the facility, which will reduce its carbon footprint initially by up to 60%; and signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with NEOM to discuss and identify opportunities for collaboration for the development of a green chemistry hub using renewable energy. SABIC also entered an agreement in 2021 with the World Economic Forum and industry partners to formalize the Low- Carbon Emitting Technologies Initiative into a stand-alone entity by 2023.
Our energy roadmap will align with the stringent targets for the second Saudi Energy Efficiency Program (SEEP) cycle. SABIC will embark on eight mega projects with an expected investment of US$ 2.7 billion to help us optimize the primary energy and feedstock utilization. We have prioritized 90 projects in total that hold the greatest potential for improving natural resources use.
SABIC is also an instrumental participant in Saudi Arabia’s Oil Sustainability Program established with the aim to sustain oil as part of the global energy mix that is economically and environmentally efficient. With a polymers and chemicals portfolio that is capable of supporting the strategic target of the program, SABIC will continue to build on its implementation of polymer-based initiatives during 2021 across the three highest oil consuming sectors: Materials, Transportation, and Utilities, with solutions including polymer sacks for cement bags, polycarbonate sheets for sky lights, polymer- based solar panels, polymer tiles and polymer pipes for gas networks to name a few.
GROWTH
This uncertain landscape demands that we capitalize on our opportunities through innovative, differentiated, and sustainable solutions. SABIC will increasingly sharpen its focus on petrochemical products in 2022, a move that will enable increased operational efficiency, create synergies, and strengthen our brand.
Our United EO/EG-III project is expected to start operations in 2022 and will produce 700,000 metric tons of glycols in Jubail, Saudi Arabia. Our latest joint venture with ExxonMobil in southeast Texas, Gulf Coast Growth Ventures, is expected to begin commericial operation in 2022. It includes an ethylene production unit with an annual capacity of 1.8 million tons, which will feed two polyethylene units with annual capacity of about 1.3 million tons and a monoethylene glycol unit with annual capacity of about 1.1 million tons. SABIC just completed its GAS 9 expansion project, which will increase oxygen production capacity by 3,600 tonnes per day (TPD) and nitrogen by 3,500 TPD, for safe operations of related industries in Jubail Industrial City.
In the evolving agri-nutrients industry, SABIC will strive to meet demand for existing offerings as an input for food production while simultaneously working on initiatives to launch differentiated products aimed at improving nutrient use efficiency, boosting farm level economics, and mitigating the environmental impact of agriculture. Additional volume from new projects will enable us to expand our market presence in key markets such as Africa and Latin America, and by 2026, we expect to have grown our production by 12%. Furthermore, we are also exploring opportunities in green ammonia production via green hydrogen derived from water electrolysis, with an eye toward playing a leading role in the low carbon ammonia market and ammonia energy market.
As the home of SABIC’s unique offerings, the Specialties business aims to become one of the top players in the “Multi-Segment Premium” specialty chemicals segment. Critical to achieving our growth is increased customer intimacy and cross- functional engagement in each region we operate in. Our innovative portfolio of solutions is aligned with transformational trends and moreover, our global presence and close relationships with Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) means that we offer a strong geographical competitive advantage over competitors who are generally regionally focused. We strive to be close to our OEMs and customers in each region and expect the ULTEM™ resin capacity expansion in Singapore and the restarting of the NORYL™ resin plant in the Netherlands to go live in 2022.
SABIC Metals (Hadeed) is actively working to achieve sustainability and Saudi Energy Efficiency Committee (SEEC) targets, with short-term sustainability targets having already achieved a 16.3% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in the rolling mills since 2010. The implementation of the Expert Furnace System Optimization Process (EFSOP) has lowered electricity consumption by 1.4% and will be implemented across five furnaces by 2024.
Hadeed is also studying the establishment of a plant in Jubail for the production of thin steel sheets within its current product portfolio. With this plant, Hadeed aims to enhance its position as a manufacturer of steel plates as per the requirements of the local market.
We are also one of the first private-sector companies to support Saudi Arabia's Shareek program, which is expected to stimulate new investments and strengthen public-private partnerships.
Across our operations, we will also deepen our investments in digitalization. The chemical industry has tended to lag in this area, but we see huge potential in the ability to effectively utilize big data tools/analytics to achieve superior market intelligence, gain new insights and become more responsive to our customers, as well as higher productivity and efficiency.