SHARQ, the Eastern Petrochemical Company affiliate of Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (SABIC), has implemented Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Systems Applications Products (SAP) software.
ERP/SAP is a technology infrastructure that enables efficient inter-subsidiary trading processes with real-time reporting and analysis for effective business performance tracking. It allows SABIC to achieve significant cost savings by reducing inventory through tight integration between the production, sales, procurement, and accounting processes of the company’s many subsidiaries and affiliated business partners around the globe.
“SHARQ is the first SABIC location in Saudi Arabia to “go live” with the ERP/SAP software,” said Mohamed Al-Mady, vice chairman and managing director of SABIC. “Additional phases of ERP/SAP implementation will be completed later this year to integrate SABIC’s Riyadh headquarters and its international locations into a single system.”
“We eventually plan to use ERP/SAP as the basic infrastructure for collaboration with our customers throughout the world, as SABIC becomes a global leader in the petrochemical industry," he added.
The Middle East’s largest petrochemicals company, SABIC, is based in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. It was founded in 1976, when the Saudi government decided to use hydrocarbon gases released in the production of oil as raw material for the production of chemicals, polymers and fertilizers.
The Saudi government owns 70 percent of SABIC shares, with the remaining 30 percent held by private investors in Saudi Arabia and other countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). SABIC’s business activities have been restructured and a new management model became effective September 1, 2002.
There are now six Strategic Business Units (SBUs): Basic Chemicals; Intermediates; Polyolefins; PVC & Polyester; Fertilizers and Metals. SABIC has two large industrial sites in Saudi Arabia—Al-Jubail and Yanbu—with sixteen world-scale production complexes.
Some of these production complexes are operated with multi-national partners such as Exxon Mobil, Shell, Fortum, Ecofuel/ENI and Mitsubishi Chemicals. In addition, SABIC has interests in three production complexes in Bahrain. Over the last 16 years, SABIC’s overall production capacity has increased considerably. In 2002 it amounted to 40.6 million metric tons.
SABIC EuroPetrochemicals owns two petrochemical production sites in Geleen (Netherlands) and Gelsenkirchen (Germany) for the production, marketing and sales of polypropylenes, polyethylenes and hydrocarbons. They annually sell about 2.6 million tons of polymers, mainly in Europe. About 2,300 people are employed at SABIC EuroPetrochemicals.
SABIC employs over 16,000 people worldwide, most of whom are based in Saudi Arabia. In 2002 SABIC posted sales of approximately 34 billion Saudi riyals ($9.06 billion) and a net profit of approximately SR2.84 billion ($758.4 million). — (menareport.com)
© 2003 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
