Saudi SABIC and Nottingham Spirk accelerate innovations

RIYADH — Leveraging its unique ability to expand value for its customers while also contributing to Saudi Vision 2030, SABIC, a global leader in the chemical industry, is investing in new applications and methods of collaboration to innovate across the industry value chain. As part of this investment in the future, SABIC’s Specialties business announced today that it is accelerating the development of disruptive solutions to create end-user market pull by engaging with Nottingham Spirk, a business innovation and product design firm based in Cleveland, Ohio, USA. This relationship brings together the benefits of SABIC’s proprietary specialty thermoplastic offerings and Nottingham Spirk’s award-winning capabilities to design and commercialize breakthrough products across multiple industrial verticals.

“SABIC’s thermoplastics portfolio is renowned in many key industries such as automotive, aircraft and rail interiors, and electrical and electronics,” noted Ernesto Occhiello, executive vice president of SABIC’s Specialties business unit. “However, there is tremendous opportunity for our high-performance materials – which offer unique combinations of thermal, mechanical and electrical properties – to be used in end products that can shape the future of healthcare, consumer goods, energy and electric vehicles, just to name a few. Working closely with Nottingham Spirk and taking part in their proven innovation process enables us to look at the entire value chain differently for fresh creative ideas that support our customers’ growth aspirations.”

“The more we learned about the capabilities of SABIC’s advanced portfolio of specialty thermoplastics to help solve really tough customer problems, the more inspired we were to start this collaboration,” said John Spirk, co-president, Nottingham Spirk. “The combination of SABIC’s diverse portfolio of material solutions along with our expertise in designing novel products that fill unmet end-user needs create an infinite number of exciting possibilities for business innovation.”

SABIC’s portfolio of unique, high performance thermoplastics and compounds includes:

• NORYL resin, a polyphenylene ether material with outstanding hydrolytic and dimensional stability, in addition to electrical insulation properties;

• ULTEM resin, a polyetherimide material delivering an unmatched combination of strength, rigidity, heat and chemical resistance, and hydrostability; and

• LNP compounds, a family of materials engineered to deliver structural performance, impact resistance, high aesthetic capabilities, flame resistance, conductivity or electrostatic dissipation, EMI shielding, thermal management and other specific characteristics depending on application requirements.

Saudi Vision 2030 is designed to reduce Saudi Arabia’s dependence on hydrocarbon exports and promote diverse economic development and sustainable job creation to benefit Saudi Arabia and its people for generations to come. — SG