OREANDA-NEWS.  October 15, 2014. The world’s largest chemicals manufacturing facility built in a single phase, Sadara Chemical Co., is in the home stretch toward the production of its first products in 2015. Reaching the finish line on time is crucial to the project’s overall success, and it will require the commitment of manpower and resources from every contracting company currently working on the project.

That was the message conveyed by Saudi Aramco president and CEO Khalid A. Al-Falih and Dow Chemical Co. CEO Andrew N. Liveris at the Sadara CEO Summit held in Jubail on Sept. 16. It was also a celebration of achievements, including news that the Sadara project is 70 percent completed. The next crucial stage is planning for future challenges in the weeks and months ahead.

With more than 40 CEOs gathered from some of the top global engineering and construction companies, Al-Falih, Liveris, and other company officials speaking at the event agreed it was clear the Sadara project was well on the way to delivering on its promise of being a game-changer for the Saudi economy.

Launched in November 2011 and scheduled to become operational in 2015, Sadara will be a big part of Saudi Aramco’s strategy to diversify the Kingdom’s economy, creating business opportunities for Saudi entrepreneurs and jobs for thousands of talented Saudis.

Al-Falih said that the project has come a long way from last year. Last year at this time, Sadara was at 30 percent completion. This year, it is above 70 percent complete. “The next 30 percent is what people will remember: how we finish, when we finish, and what the result is of the facilities we finish.”

Al-Falih urged contractors to redouble their efforts and work together as a team to ensure that Sadara remains on schedule. “What we do want is to bring Sadara to life in the best, most effective and safest manner possible, and the key to that is teamwork,” Al-Falih said.

“We are right now rounding the corner and entering the home stretch, and while our objective is closer than it was, our steps forward are even more critical, requiring greater determination and a higher level of cooperation among all our partners,” Al-Falih said. “If we can achieve that, we will establish an industrial landmark that will contribute to prosperity for generations to come, and put your companies’ names and our names in the history books.”

Once built, Sadara will have the capacity to produce 3 million tons per year of high quality chemical products such as polyethylene, propylene oxide, elastomers, glycol ethers, amines, isocyanates and polyether polyols, many of which have never previously been produced in the Kingdom. The creation of Sadara will not only create hundreds of jobs for Saudis at the plant itself, but it will also create an environment where Saudi entrepreneurs can establish manufacturing companies using those chemical products to make everything from paints and sealants to insulation and auto parts and even toothpaste.