Sabic, the chemicals business of Saudi Aramco, sees opportunities in the anticipated growth in European demand for circular and sustainable plastics despite current petrochemical market headwinds, as per Chemweek.“Europe is the innovation hub for us,” Sami Al-Osaimi, executive vice president/polymers at Sabic, said Oct. 8 in a briefing at the K 2025 plastics trade fair being held in Dusseldorf on Oct. 8-15.Osaimi said Sabic continues to see “huge attention” in Europe to the development of circular solutions for products in applications including automotive, mobility and healthcare.“This is where we see value creation and that’s our focus,” he said. Osaimi acknowledged that the global chemical industry — in the midst of a sustained downturn now in its fourth year due primarily to structural issues of oversupply and weak demand — is “having a challenging time… we see global demand swinging.”Sabic permanently closed several petchem plants in Europe during an 18-month period from January 2024 to June 2025, including naphtha crackers at Geleen, Netherlands, and Wilton, UK, and a polycarbonate (PC) plant in Spain, as it responded to the downbeat market conditions and Europe’s lack of competitiveness in the olefins and polyolefins sectors compared with lower-cost regions.Sabic has been “passing and navigating through those kind of challenges” for the past five decades, Osaimi said. He did not discount further rationalization of its asset portfolio in Europe, saying that Sabic “always assesses and reviews its operations and businesses, looking at how we can become more efficient.”However, he noted that out of over 130 new polymer solutions and products being displayed by the company at K 2025, more than 120 were “coming from our assets in Europe.”Sabic also remains focused on mechanical and chemical recycling solutions, in response to rising demand from its customers, he said.In August, Sabic’s chemical recycling joint venture with Plastic Energy Ltd. at Geleen produced its first batch of pyrolysis oil (pyoil). The JV plant is slated to begin full commercial production later this year with a nameplate input capacity for 20,000 metric tons per year of mixed waste plastics.The plant has been designed to integrate into Sabic’s petchems complex at Geleen for the onward production of polymers, using the pyoil volumes as a drop-in substitute for conventional naphtha.Less than 30% of Europe’s 32 million metric tons of waste plastics is currently recycled, according to Plastic Energy.The EU has a current goal under its Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR) for all packaging to be fully recyclable by 2030.
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