The world's largest polyolefin market is now in Asia, and the Middle East is making massive investments to meet the growing demand in that region, according to Dr Abdulrahman Al Ubaid, Vice-President of Polyolefins at Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (Sabic).

In his keynote speech to Dubai Plast in Dubai, Dr Al Ubaid underlined the central role that Middle East plays in the satisfying global polyolefins demands.
He said, 'The evolving global polyolefins market continues to shift demand towards Asia and supply to the Middle East.
'The production of ethylene - a building block for polyolefins - will almost double in the Middle East between now and 2010.
'As a result, there will be a dramatic increase in the production of polyolefins by 10 million tonnes from Gulf Cooperation Council member states.'
'The Middle East is implementing its largest ever investment phase in the petrochemicals industry of approximately $40 billion within the next five years.'
Sabic is expecting its sales volume for polymers in South East Asia to increase considerably over the next five years, Dr Al Ubaid said at Sabic's customer reception held in conjunction with Aseanplas 2005.
'Our sales volume for South East Asia is expected to double in the next five years as South East Asia is a booming market for chemical products,' he said.
'Recognising the rising demand for petrochemical products in Asia, Sabic is expanding its operations in the Middle East to meet this demand,' he added.
Sabic's current and planned investment for expansions exceed $8 billion and aims to increase annual production from 43 million tonnes in 2004 to more than 60 million tonnes by 2008.
Al Ubaid added, 'Asia is a very important market for Sabic.
'Sabic is continually improving its services to better service its customers in this region.
'We intend to localise our production facilities in Asia to be nearer to our customers and we are undertaking feasibilities to look for the best options.'
Sabic general manager for Asia Pacific, Yousef Al Benyan said, 'Sabic also intends to expand its network and warehousing facilities for polymers to meet increasing demand and to better serve its customers.
'We currently have three warehouses - one each in Shanghai, Singapore and Hong Kong. By 2006, we intend to include six more warehouses in the Asia Pacific region.
'These would be located in Vietnam, China, Australia and New Zealand. Having these warehouses will enable us to shorten delivery time to our valued customers,' Al Benyan added.