Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (Sabic) will launch four new state-of-the-art technology and innovation facilities in 2013, two in Saudi Arabia and one each in India and China, bringing the total number of its research facilities around the world to 18, the company announced.

The four new centres represent a strategic investment of around half a billion US dollars to continuously improve technology, applications and solutions and meet the needs of an increasingly sophisticated marketplace, as well as address a wide variety of sustainability issues, a Sabic statement said. 

Mohamed Al Mady, vice chairman and CEO, said that by continuing to invest in technology and innovation, Sabic is driving ingenuity forward to meet the specific needs of customers as well as society. “These four new facilities will further empower our global technology and innovation centres to build on their innovative systems to develop new technologies, improve manufacturing processes and contribute to a sustainable environment for our communities.”

The two centres in Saudi Arabia are the Corporate Research & Innovation Centre (CRI) at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (Kaust) in Thuwal, near Jeddah, and the Sabic Plastic Applications Development Centre (SPADC) in Riyadh Techno Valley at King Saud University (KSU) in Riyadh.

Ernesto Occhiello, Sabic executive vice president, technology and innovation, explained that the CRI, scheduled for an April opening, “will seek to exchange experience and knowledge between the researchers at Sabic and Kaust, opening access to new technical competencies, blending academia with industry, tapping into new inventions made by academia, sourcing top talent and fresh ideas, and developing a community of excellence in upstream research.”

The SPADC, which is set to open in the second quarter of the year, aims to develop new applications and products that support Sabic’s business growth. Located adjacent to Saudi Arabia’s largest university, King Saud University, it will enable Sabic to build closer links between academia and the industrial research community, Occhiello said.

The SPADC aims to be the centre of excellence for automotive, packaging, consumer, construction, signage, and compounding. It will work closely with Sabic’s other technology and innovation centres to achieve set targets, including training customers and employees. The centre will enable Saudi Arabia to enter advanced industrial fields, and support the National Industrial Clusters Development Programme to develop industries such as packaging, automotive and machinery. It will help develop new plastics applications and extend technical support to local and international customers in various fields, including polymers, elastomers and speciality products.

“These new centres in Saudi Arabia are already creating around 150 professional jobs, and are a part of our plans to significantly boost research and technology in Saudi Arabia,” Occhiello said.

The Bangalore research centre is scheduled to open in the second quarter of 2013. It will deal with application development, strategic business research and corporate research and will focus primarily on diverse areas of research in chemistry, material science, process engineering and analytical and application technology. Its aim is to support business as a strategic centre of excellence to cater to global and regional needs.

The centre in Shanghai will open in the third quarter of 2013. It will deal with application development, strategic business research and corporate research. It will focus on fundamental and applied research in support of Sabic’s Strategic Business Units as well as the company’s Technology and Innovation unit’s corporate projects.

“The Bangalore and Shanghai centres, which will host around 500 professionals, are an indication of Sabic’s commitment to be the technology partner of choice for Asian partners as well as the employer of choice for the best talent from the region,” Occhiello said.

Sabic recently expanded its  multi-year agreement with one of the world’s top-ranked universities, ETH Zurich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich), under an umbrella agreement signed in Zurich, Switzerland, for multiple future projects in a wide range of areas in technology and innovation.

The company had entered into a research collaboration agreement with the Swiss university last year in the field of functional materials and nanotechnology.

The company, meanwhile, reported a drop in 2012 net income and promised to improve operations, environment care and sustainability.

The net income for the 12-month period ended December 31, 2012 amounts to SR 24.72 billion ($6.3 billion) compared to the net income of SR 29.24 billion for the same period in the preceding year, a decrease of 15.5 per cent.

It attributed the decline to higher cost of sales and lower sales prices for certain products, despite higher sales and production volumes and reduction in financial charges.

The net income for the fourth quarter ended December 31, 2012 was SR5.83 billion compared with the net income of SR5.24 billion for the same quarter in 2011, an increase of 11.3 per cent, but was a decrease of 7.6 per cent compared to the net income for the third quarter of 2012 of SR6.31 billion.