Ta'ziz and Reliance team up with UAE’s Shaheen on $2bn chemical project in Ruwais

Abu Dhabi Chemicals Derivatives Company, known as Ta’ziz, said Shaheen Chem Holdings Investment will enter its $2 billion joint venture with India's Reliance Industries as a strategic partner.

The proposed JV aims to construct and operate a Chlor Alkali, Ethylene Dichloride (EDC) and Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC) plant. The plant will be built in the Ta’ziz Industrial Chemicals Zone, a collaboration between Abu Dhabi National Oil Company and the emirate’s holding company ADQ, in Ruwais.

“We are delighted to welcome Shaheen as a strategic partner … this strategic agreement further consolidates Ta’ziz’s position as the sought-after partner for local and international investment in the UAE’s chemicals industry,” Khaleefa Al Mheiri, acting chief executive of Ta’ziz, said.

“The partnership supports our national strategy to drive the growth and diversification of the country’s industrial base, strengthen domestic supply chains and enable the private sector to ‘make it in the Emirates'.”

Shaheen brings extensive knowledge of the local market and joins the project with a focus on utilising production for use in local supply chains, Ta’ziz said in a statement on Thursday.

The agreement marked the first direct investment by a privately-owned UAE company in the Ta’ziz Industrial Chemicals Zone.

It followed the December's investment agreements signed between Ta’ziz and eight UAE-based investors, who agreed to invest up to a 20 per cent stake in a portfolio of projects worth $4bn in its Industrial Chemicals Zone in Ruwais. The deal marked the first domestic public-private partnership in Abu Dhabi’s downstream and petrochemicals sector.

Ta’ziz is an industrial services and logistics company that enables and supports growth of the Ruwais Industrial Complex and fulfils Abu Dhabi’s downstream, chemical and petrochemical requirements across industrial sectors.

The Ta'ziz Industrial Chemical Zone projects are currently in the design phase and are expected to start operations in 2025.

The chemicals sector is an integral part of the UAE's Operation 300bn, which aims to raise the contribution of the country's industrial sector to its gross domestic product to Dh300bn by 2031.

“We are honoured to partner with Ta’ziz and Reliance in this world class industrial plant which will include the largest Chlor Alkali plant in the world,” said Walid Azhari, managing director of Abu Dhabi-based Shaheen.

Chemicals are an attractive sector given their projected demand growth globally and the opportunity local production creates to grow the UAE’s industrial base.

Chlor Alkali enables the production of caustic soda, crucial to the production of aluminum, and EDC is used in the production of PVC for a wide range of industrial and consumer products including pipes, windows, cables, films and flooring.

Ta’ziz comprises three zones — an industrial chemicals zone that will host chemicals production, a light industrial zone that will be home to downstream conversion industries to convert the outputs of the chemicals zone into consumable products and an industrial services zone that will house a variety of companies.