Sadara Chemical Company (Sadara) said it has signed an MoU with Veolia Middle East, a Paris-based group and world leader in industrial waste management, to construct a sustainable central utilities facility in PlasChem Park, the unique industrial park adjacent to the Sadara Chemical Complex.

PlasChem Park is a collaborative effort between Sadara and the Royal Commission for Jubail and Yanbu (RCJY) in Jubail's Second Industrial City.

The MoU provides a long-term waste management solution for Sadara, and creates an opportunity for Veolia to build a utility plant including waste management and waste energy facilities at PlasChem Park, enabling Veolia to manage a substantial portion of Sadara’s waste streams.

On the partnership, Sadara CEO Dr Faisal Al Faqeer said one of the group’s main drivers is the enablement of a vibrant downstream manufacturing industry in kingdom.

"Another is to always act responsibly towards the environment. This deal allows us to combine those two key objectives, and we are very excited indeed to partner with Veolia to deliver this waste product management solution," noted Dr Al Faqeer.

"With partners like Veolia, we are confident that we will continue to catalyse the growth of the kingdom’s downstream manufacturing industry," he added.

Veolia, a leading developer of sustainable responsible services and expertise to companies in many types of industries, currently operates 29 similar utility facilities worldwide.

In Jubail, Veolia group has a track record in operation and maintenance of industrial waste water projects and in delivering engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) works – specifically, the Marafiq Desalination Plant (800,000 cu m per day) and the Sadara SWRO plant (178,000 cu m per day).

The central utilities “island” will incinerate industrial wastes and recover the heat from this process to produce a usable steam by-product. This will act as an incentive to attract PlasChem Park investors, providing their proposed manufacturing plants with third-party steam at an attractive price.

Additionally, the Veolia facility will produce cooled water and compressed air, which will also be made available to PlasChem Park tenants for industrial use.

Veolia Arabia CEO Faisal Al Dawish said: "We are very excited to be contributing our knowledge and experience to the further development of PlasChem Park, a truly exciting endeavor in Jubail Industrial City."

"This new utilities facility will implement environmentally responsible principles of the “Circular Economy,” a favored international economic model that keeps resources in use for as long as possible, extracting maximum value and then recovering and regenerating additional products and energy, a concept that we ascribe to wholeheartedly at Veolia," he added.

The utilities project will be developed by Veolia and potential partners. The investment will be made by Veolia and partners, and Sadara will act only as facilitator to the project’s success and has agreed to transfer waste products to the plant.-TradeArabia News Service