A joint venture of Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (Sabic) and Mitsubishi Rayon has signed a contract to construct two plants in the east of the kingdom worth 4.5 billion riyals ($1.2 billion), a statement said on Thursday.

The plants at Jubail Industrial City will be built by Taiwan's CTCI Corporation, with one producing annually 250,000 metric tonnes of Methyl Methacrylate Monomer (MMA) and the other 40,000 metric tonnes of Poly Methyl Methacrylate (PMMA) a year.

Construction has begun and should be completed in the first quarter of 2017, with commercial operations beginning later in that year. The project will be funded by the partners' own cash as well as bank financing, the statement added.-Reuters