Through its Nusaned Investment vehicle, Saudi Arabian petrochemicals and plastics producer Sabic (Riyadh; www.sabic.com) has set up a joint venture said to be worth SAR 37m (EUR 8.4m) to own and operate a production facility for wood-plastic composite (WPC) profiles. JV partner is Suhul Alkhalej, a Saudi industrial development and investment company. A location for the facility was not announced. The composites are used for decking and cladding, sheets and doors, and the portfolio will also extend to window and door profiles made of unplasticised PVC. Sabic will supply the polymer for manufacturing the products that it bills as more energy efficient than traditionally used construction materials.

Faisal Al-Bahair, who is VP for local content & business development in addition to being CEO of Nusaned Investment, said the new project fulfils Sabic’s strategy of investing in industrial SMEs, within the kingdom’s “Saudi Vision 2030”.

The new joint venture is Nusaned’s second project, following an agreement signed in May 2019 with the Schmid Group (Freudenstadt / Germany; www.schmid-group.com) to establish the JV, Advance Energy Storage System Investment. Its focus is on manufacturing vanadium redox flow batteries at the third industrial city in Dammam / Saudi Arabia.

According to Sabic, Nusaned Investment through several projects contributed approximately SR 6.1 bn (EUR 1.4 bn) to Saudi Arabia’s GDP in 2019 and created more than 3,000 jobs. Nusaned Investment secured six deals in 2019 together worth SR 143m.