Dow and Grace Plan Middle East Facilities

Dow Chemical and W.R. Grace are planning investments in the Middle East that will expand the region’s nascent specialty chemical industry. Dow says it will build a facility in Saudi Arabia’s Jubail Industrial City to make coating materials for local and export markets. The planned investment will complement the $20 billion Sadara Chemical petrochemical project that Dow and Saudi Aramco unveiled in July 2011 for Jubail Industrial City. Dow is also building a plant in Jubail for its Filmtec reverse-osmosis membranes, and last week it announced a plan to work on related desalination technology with Saudi Arabia’s Saline Water Conversion Corp. Separately, Grace and Al Dahra Agricultural Co. have signed a letter of intent regarding a fluid cracking catalysts (FCC) and additives joint-venture plant to be built in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, by late 2015. Grace, which calls itself the world’s largest supplier of FCC catalysts, sees a $150 million catalyst sales opportunity in the Middle East and South Asia over the next five years.