GPIC General Manager Abdul Rahman Jawahery charts the company's many  achievements in the petrochemicals sector and highlights its plans for the future

OGN: Gulf Petrochemical Industries Co (GPIC) is Bahrain's flagship petrochemical venture. Can you give a brief background of the origins, shareholders and the main features of the company?

The company was formed in 1979 as a joint venture with equal shareholding by the governments of Bahrain, Saudi Arabia (represented by Saudi Basic Industrries Corporation (Sabic) and Kuwait (represented by PIC) with the objective of utilising Bahrain's natural gas for the production of petrochemicals.
The first project consisted of reclaiming an industrial site of 60 hectares from the sea and constructing an ammonia plant (1000 tonnes per day or tpd), a methanol plant (1000 tpd) and a comprehensive utilities plant. Production started in 1985.
In 1989, the ammonia and methanol plants were debottlenecked to produce 1200 tpd of each product. In 1998 a 1700 tpd urea plant and its marine export facilities were added downstream of the Ammonia plant.
GPIC has become a role model for other petrochemical industries in the region. Our strength lies in our people and the solid systems we have developed to ensure reliable, safe, eco-friendly and economic operation.
GPIC was the first major industrial company in the Arabian Gulf to be certified to both ISO 9001 and ISO 14001. We have since progressed to the ISO 9001:2000 version and last year qualified for ISO 18000. We also voluntarily adhere to PSM principles in our complex.
The company has established a number of core values over the years, some of which are reliability, safety, quality, environmental concern, training and development and above all, team spirit.

OGN: GPIC has become a symbol of industrial and economic success in the region, has this been the case since inception?

Initially the company faced difficulties when the international prices for our products did not achieve the levels anticipated during the planning phases. 
Nevertheless, the level of motivation and commitment by the workforce and the extraordinary continuous daily production runs achieved in the process plants such as ammonia, 738 days, methanol, 932 days and urea (believed to be a world record) of 941 days, indicates intensive utilisation of the plant at the highest levels of safety.

OGN: GPIC is not only successful as a petrochemical producer, you also have a tremendous track record in safety. How have you promoted safety in GPIC to the level that the company is now recognised as one of the best internationally?

For all of us at GPIC, safety is a way of life. We embarked at a very early stage on a campaign to broaden the safety concept to encompass not only all aspects of work but also the home environment. We made a conscious effort to include homes, wives and especially the children of all employees in our safety campaigns and activities.
We introduced, as part of our annual Safety Week, safety competitions for employees' families, a Family Safety Evening etc. For GPIC employees occupational safety does not begin and end at the factory gate, it is part of everyone's daily life and includes home and family.
Our track record in safety, which includes recognition by the NSA (USA), numerous Gold Awards and Gold Medals from RoSPA, UK, reached a climax with Lord Faulkner of Worcester, President of RoSPA, presenting GPIC with the Chemical Industry Safety Trophy (the first ever to a non-British industrial company) here in Bahrain in 2003.

OGN:   Petrochemical industries traditionally have a reputation for not being very environmentally friendly. How have you at GPIC changed this concept?

We are very aware of the adverse publicity given to petrochemical industries and their environmental impact globally. As a result we have tended to concentrate our efforts on simple practical demonstrations of our care for the environment.
We have clearly demonstrated that a petrochemical industry can be successful, productive and profitable without having to harm the environment. It was also fortunate that the designers of the process plants set themselves such strict environmental standards at that time that the complex has no problem in complying with the most stringent environmental legislation today.
Our demonstration projects, which do far more than any formal statement or laboratory analysis sheet to demonstrate our environmental friendliness, consist of the following:
• A Charity Garden producing about two tonnes of vegetables annually proves that our soil is uncontaminated and healthy. The produce is distributed to needy families in the neighbouring villages.
In addition we have a number of green areas with hundreds of date palms, fruit and other trees in and around our complex to enhance our image as a fertiliser producer and to create a pleasant workplace for our people.
• A Charity Fish Farm producing 30,000 sea bream of around 1kg each annually to demonstrate the cleanliness of the sea around our complex. The Fish Farm is very close to our seawater cooling water outfall and is living proof of the environmental friendliness of our major liquid effluent. The fish produced are released back into the sea to bolster Bahrain's fish stocks.
• A Bird Sanctuary where hundreds of indigenous and migratory birds visit or roost. This is concrete proof of the cleanliness of the air in and around our plant and is a practical demonstration which far surpasses the impact of SOx and NOx monitoring to the man in the street. We have observed around 60 different bird species in the first year of our Bird Sanctuary and recorded the first successful hatching of a Western Reef Heron chick in Bahrain.
• A Herbal Garden to conserve indigenous herbal desert plants threatened by extinction or destruction of habitat, to provide material for scientific study and to conserve Bahrain's heritage.
We actively carry our message of concern and care for the environment to the youth of Bahrain. GPIC has a comprehensive lecture scheme in which young graduate engineers deliver lectures on the environment to schools in the Kingdom.

OGN:   How do you see GPIC's social obligations in Bahrain and in which manner do you interact with local society?

GPIC has a relatively young workforce, 80 per cent of whom are Bahrainis. We take pride in the fact that we have trained and developed all our operators and technicians.
To provide recreation GPIC actively participates in a number of the local industrial sports leagues. Last year we inaugurated a purpose built club for our employees with all the recreational and standard sporting facilities such as a gymnasium, tennis courts, swimming pool, sports hall etc.
We also encourage our people to participate in charity activities and events and GPIC contributes substantially to various local charities.
We recognise that our people are our most valuable assets and we go out of our way to provide a safe, pleasant and happy workplace for them. It is no coincidence that GPIC employees formed the first labour union in Bahrain and are working closely with management to the mutual benefit of both employees and company.
We are also active in our support and participation in educational activities as well as local, regional and international conferences. We have participated actively in IFA, AFA, British Sulphur and many other conferences over the past 10 years.
We value education and development of our people very highly. In addition to vocational development courses our Training Centre arranges a number of lectures on health, environment and general interest topics during the year.

OGN:  GPIC is the present holder of the Prime Minister HH Sheikh Khalifa bin Salman Al Khalifa's Award for Excellence in Major Industrial Companies in Bahrain, and GPIC has also received additional international recognition. Have these achievements assisted the company in the international markets?

We certainly enjoy an unrivalled reputation for reliability and quality of product in our market sectors.
 It is also true that we have received a number of international recognitions such as the Prime Minister's Award that you have mentioned. Others are Shaikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum's Award for Arab Management, the GCC Environment Award, the first Bahrainisation Shield, RoSPA's Chemical Industry Safety Trophy, mentioned before, numerous benchmarking results placing GPIC at the top or certainly in the top categories of their various studies, etc.
All these achievements have certainly helped us to enter premium markets such as Australia, Britain and Europe, the US and Canada with confidence in all our products. This in turn led to the requests from competitors and our own technology holders for training courses for personnel from newly commissioned plants worldwide.

OGN:  GPIC has achieved much in the fields of technical excellence, reliability, quality, safety etc; has the company also enjoyed the same economic success?

From the outset it was vitally important that GPIC should be successful financially to demonstrate that a joint venture such as ourselves could be successful. It would also encourage further enterprises of a similar nature to be established and introduce foreign investment in Bahrain. Most importantly it would demonstrate to the world that Bahrain has the skilled manpower, training facilities and capabilities to successfully operate and maintain a world class petrochemical facility through successfully transferring, absorbing and utilising the appropriate technologies and technical know-how.
GPIC is indeed an economic success story as well. We have paid around $270 million in dividends to our shareholders over the past decade. We contribute approximately $55 million annually to Bahrain's economy; that is substantially more than $1 billion over the life of the company. We have excellent relationships with the banks and other financial institutions and at the present we are in a strong financial position, ready to take advantage of new developments in the region. As a GCC joint venture we stand unrivalled anywhere.

OGN: What does the future hold for GPIC?

We have a number of expansion and downstream projects ready on the drawing board. There are a number of options in terms of the provision of raw materials regionally that are in an advanced stage of discussion at present. The wise leadership of the Kingdom of Bahrain is actively pursuing these options to ensure the reliable and economic provision of strategic raw materials to industry.
At GPIC we stand ready to launch these new ventures with the agreement of our shareholders, once the raw material availability is confirmed.