14 | Tees Business
Image by Stephen Hornsey
CRACKING
GOOD NEWS!
SABIC investment
breathes new life into
Teesside’s industrial icon
How global chemical giant has secured hundreds
of local jobs for years to come
T
hey’re two of the most immediately
recognisable industrial images,
known to a generation of Teessiders.
Thousands of small but brightly shining
lights on a gigantic steel structure and a
flare lighting up the night sky from one of
the tallest stacks on the massive Wilton
International site.
Both imposing images belong to SABIC’s
Olefins 6 plant, the iconic ‘Cracker’,
described as the cornerstone of Teesside
industry.
The lights illuminate the millions of
individual components of the giant structure,
while the flare is an essential safety device,
burning off surplus gases in the event of a
problem with the production process.
At one end, the plant is fed raw materials
from oil refineries and ‘cracks’ apart their
components under temperatures of around
1,000 degrees Centigrade before cooling
them to below -180 to produce ethylene,
propylene and butadiene - building block
chemicals that go into a wide variety of manmade products.
These are some of the main basic building
blocks for everything the chemical and
plastics industry makes, from cups, food
packaging and storage to shampoo and
detergents.
Built by ICI but run by Saudi firm SABIC
for the past 10 years, Olefins 6 has been a
part of the Teesside skyline since 1979 but
in recent years there were suggestions that
it’s time may have been coming to an end
as it struggled to compete against more
successful plants across Europe.
But now the Cracker is back.
It has undergone radical change to allow it
to use ethane gas as a raw material, making
it massively more flexible and globally
competitive, while extending its lifespan.
The upgrade – which has taken more
than two years to complete – secures a
sustainable, competitive Teesside future
for SABIC, one of the world’s leading
petrochemicals firms.
Along with around 1,000 staff and
contractors employed on its Teesside sites,
thousands more local jobs within the wider
supply chain are reliant on SABIC, bringing
some £400 million into the economy from
payroll, utilities, goods and services.
The multi-million pound investment
(exact figures have been kept a closely
guarded secret by the company, with bosses
revealing only that it is “very significant”)
secures those many Teesside jobs and the
local economy that relies on it for another
generation.
“The Cracker upgrade is a lifeline for
Teesside,” says SABIC’s Teesside site director
John Bruijnooge. “It means SABIC is here for
another generation.
“After many years of concerns about
whether or not there would be a long-term
existence for SABIC’s operations on Teesside
this is the game-changer.
“It will enable us to achieve a better
performance with the operations we have,
giving us a far stronger, more competitive
position in the global market.
“Our first aim is to become more
profitable, of course, but secondly - and this
will become even more important in four or
five years’ time - is that it’s what I would call
a defensive investment.
“We have to arm ourselves against an
expected high volume import of ethylene
from the United States.