Harcros plans specialties in Saudi Arabia

Harcros Chemicals, a Kansas City-based chemical distributor and producer, is forming a joint venture with the Saudi firm ARA Specialty Industrial Co. to build a specialty chemical plant in Jubail, Saudi Arabia. The plant will be in PlasChem Park, an industrial park meant to foster industry downstream from the Sadara petrochemical joint venture between Dow Chemical and Saudi Aramco. Sadara will supply the plant with ethylene oxide and propylene oxide. It in turn will make methyldiethanolamine, used in oil and gas processing, as well as chemicals for construction materials, coatings, metal treatment, mining, and water ­treatment. In January, Germany’s Ilco Chemikalien unveiled its own plan for a specialties plant in PlasChem.