Saudi Arabian petrochemical and plastics group Sabic (Riyadh; www.sabic.com) will expand the number of its R&D bases this year to 18 with the launch of four new innovation centres, including two in Saudi Arabia and one each in India and China. Altogether, the group is investing USD 500m in the projects, which it said will meet the needs of customers and an increasingly sophisticated marketplace while also addressing sustainability issues.

Along with the Corporate Research and Innovation Center (CRI) at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Thuwal, near Jeddah, the Saudi-based centres include the Sabic Plastics Applications Development Center (SPADC) at King Saud University in Riyadh’s “Techno Valley.” Both are set to open in in the second quarter of 2013.

The SPADC is intended to be a centre of excellence for plastics applications in the automotive, packaging, consumer, construction, signing and compounding sectors and will support Saudi Arabia’s National Industrial Clusters Development Programme in creating national automotive, packaging and machinery production sectors. In developing new plastics applications, it will extend technical support to the group’s customers.

Sabic’s Indian research centre, planned to open in Q2, will be located in Bangalore and will focus on application development and strategic business research as well as corporate research. The Shanghai centre opening in the third quarter will have a similar focus.