Shortages of rubber rollers in Saudi Arabia will be a thing of the past with a local factory setting up production facilities for them. The Dammam factory expects to make further headway with plans to expand the product range.

Abdulla Abdulaziz Al Rajhi Rubber Factory, a division of the Al Rajhi Group, serves the needs of the printing, packing, food production and plastic industries and any other sector that needs rollers.

The promoters of the group decided to set up the factory when they realised that several types of steel- and rubber-coated rollers were not easily available in the local market.

The Abdulla Abdulaziz Al Rajhi Rubber Factory is better known as the Al Rajhi Rubber Roller Factory as rollers are what the venture makes.

The product range includes inking rollers UV, transfer rollers, vibrators, distributors, impression rollers, dampeners and lamination, varnishing, glueing, Teflon, silicon, support, pressure, drive, food-grade, coating and banana rollers as well as numbering rollers and units.

An expansion programme includes the manufacture of anilox rollers that manager Abdullah Al Rajhi said would be unique in the Middle East. Also unveiled were plans to manufacture sleeves that will have fibre glass as a shell with a rubber covering. The sleeves, which will have an application for modern Roto-type printing, will be produced with the help of new technology, Abdullah Al Rajhi said. "This technique or this kind of industry is not available at present in the Arab world," he added.

The staff includes experienced technicians and a team of engineers, quality controllers and supervisors. Sales manager Riad Noujeim said machines in use included the Strip Builder and grinders imported from Remco of the US. The raw material is a rubber compound of different shore hardness that is imported from Chase Elastomer (UK). The company has full testing facilities.

The Al Rajhi Group has its origins in 1973 when Al Rajhi Trading Establishment was established as a proprietary firm under the patronage of Abdulaziz Abdulla Al Rajhi. The services then were limited to inland transportation. Another division formed subsequently took care of steel fabrication and was known as the Al Rajhi Tankers Factory.

The Al Rajhi Trading Establishment provides quality transportation throughout the Kingdom, the GCC states, Syria, Jordan and Yemen. The company now owns a fleet of vehicles numbering over 400 and consisting of flat-bed and low-bed trailers and fuel and water tankers among other vehicles. The vehicles are staffed and equipped to meet the stringent quality standards of the Saudi Standard for Transport Vehicles.

"Within the Kingdom, Al Rajhi has been acclaimed by different customers," said Abdulla Al Rajhi in remarks about the transportation division.

The group's tanker factory undertakes all kinds of steel fabrication, including the fabrication of water and fuel tanks, chemical tanks, flat bed and low bed trailers, tippers, silos and steel hangars.