Saudi lube supplier Gulf Start Factory Co. for Petroleum Industries signed a deal to build a blending plant in the industrial zone of King Abdullah Economic City, a development under construction 100 kilometers north of Jeddah.
Jeddah-based Gulf Start signed a contract with KAEC last week, according to a statement on the latters website, for a 15,677 square meter site in the megaprojects Industrial Valley. Cost and a timeline of the plant werent disclosed, nor was a production capacity figure.
Gulf Start, which makes lubricants under the Neutron and Shield brands, will sell its line of products made at KAEC throughout Saudi Arabia, in the countries of the Arab League and in Africa.
Construction is set to begin later this year in the KAEC, which is a U.S. $86 billion planned city being built along the coast of the Red Sea, scheduled to be completed by 2020. An integrated, approximately 14 square kilometer port, King Abdullah Port, is slated to be the largest in the region. Gulf Start is one of hundreds of companies that have signed contracts to operate factories in the citys 11,000 acre industrial zone. The city is around an hour and a half away from Mecca and three hours from Medina.
As of late 2014, Saudi Arabias lubricants demand was estimated to be around 405,000 tons per year, according to the formerly state-owned supplier Petromin Corp. Several major international lube suppliers operate in Saudi Arabia, such as Shell, BP Castrol and ExxonMobil. Petromin Corp. commands around 40 percent of the market, and is followed by Fuchs Petrolub SE and Shell at approximately 20 percent each, Mobil and Gulf Oil International at just under 10 percent each, and a handful of other suppliers in the single digits.