RIYADH, 16 July — An SR560 million licensing and technology transfer agreement was signed here between Al Rajhi International Contracting and UOP Co. of the United States for the production of normal paraffin at Al Rajhi’s plant in the Jubail Industrial Area.
A. Durdevic signed the contract on behalf of UOP Co., which will provide technical information and knowhow for the engineering designs, construction, commissioning and operation of the plant. The joint venture is one of several which have been set up under the liberalized investment climate in the Kingdom.
Muhammad ibn Ibrahim Al Bibi said that the new company, which he will be managing, has already appointed a core team to start of a conference on engineering design in Chicago in collaboration with UOP next month.
Al-Bibi disclosed that the Saudi Industrial Development Fund (SIDF) had approved a loan of SR 247 million ($66 million) for the Normal Paraffin Project with a capacity of 120,000 tons a year.
He said the company also signed a feedstock supply agreement with Aramco Shell Refinery (SASREF) in April. Further, the Royal Commission for Jubail and Yanbu has allocated a site for their project adjacent to SASREF for sourcing the feedstock supply from the refinery.
Normal Paraffin is an intermediate petrochemical product used primarily for the production of Linear Alkyl Benzene (LAB), which in turn is used to produce Alkyl Sulfonates, the active ingredient of household and industrial detergents.
The complex will start commercial production in the fall of 2003, with 120,000 mt/y normal paraffin and 70,000 mt/y LAB.
