SABIC is a Saudi diversified manufacturing company, active in petrochemicals, chemicals, industrial polymers, fertilizers, and metals industry. It is a largest public company present in Saudi Arabia. In August 2018, company announced its collaboration with Ohio based design firm Nottingham Spirk to develop new uses for its specialty materials. Nottingham Spirk founded in 1972 created more than 100 world-first innovations and has over 1,200 commercialized patents. SABIC said in the statement, “This relationship brings together the benefits of SABIC’s proprietary specialty thermoplastic offerings and Nottingham Spirk’s award-winning capabilities to design and commercialize breakthrough products across multiple industrial verticals”. Ernesto Occhiello, executive vice president of SABIC’s specialties business unit, said in the statement “SABIC’s thermoplastics portfolio is renowned in many key industries such as automotive, aircraft and rail interiors, and electrical and electronics,”

SABIC’s portfolio of unique, high performance thermoplastics and compounds includes:

• NORYL™ resin, apolyphenyleneether material with outstanding hydrolytic and dimensional stability, in addition to electrical insulation properties;
• ULTEM™ resin, a polyetherimide material delivering an unmatched combination of strength, rigidity, heat and chemical resistance, and hydrostability;
• LNP™ compounds, a family of materials engineered to deliver structural performance, impact resistance, high aesthetic capabilities, flame resistance, conductivity or electrostatic dissipation, EMI shielding, thermal management and other specific characteristics depending on application requirements.

Analyst View:

SABIC is investing in new applications and methods of collaboration to innovate across the industry value chain. The combination of diversified portfolio of SABIC’s material solution along with Nottingham Spirk’s expertise in designing novel products that fill unmet end-user needs create an infinite number of exciting possibilities for business innovation. In 2018, SABIC expanded the production capacity of NORYL RESIN (PPE/PPO). The Company also plan to recommission the operations at Bergen op Zoom PPE resin plant in the Netherlands. This expansion will help the Company to produce polyphenylene ether (PPE/PPO) by increasing the global production by more than 40%.