Saudi Arabia’s Advanced Petrochemicals has finally completed the construction of its major new expansion facility at Jubail. The Advanced Polyolefins Industry Company (APOC) is a joint venture between Advanced (85%) and Korea’s SK Gas (15%), and the Saudi firm confirmed the start of operations in a 14 July statement to the Tadawul exchange.

The APOC facility is centered around an 843,000 t/y capacity Propane Dehydrogenation (PDH) plant alongside two polypropylene plants with combined capacity of 800,000 t/y and a 70,000 t/y isopropanol (IPA) unit. Contracts for the $1.8bn complex were awarded in 2020, with an initial planned startup date of end-2024 (MEES, 11 December 2020). This was then pushed back to Q1 this year, before dragging into the middle of the year (MEES, 28 March). (CONTINUED - 350 WORDS)