Al Tayar Plastics/Rubber, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

In 1975, Saud Al-Tayar, the father of brothers Raed and Fahad, started to ask himself why Saudi Arabia needed to import processed polyethylene (PE) conduit from Europe to meet demand from its domestic building and construction industry.

Saud Al-Tayar and sons Raed and Fahad know only the best will do.

After all, the potential to extrude such goods from Saudi-produced PE existed right in his own country. Subsequently, the answer to that question pointed him toward the birth of a plastics processing company that now includes four plants employing 1500 to produce pipes and fittings and extrude polyethylene film, plus process rubber products. Today Al Tayar Plastic & Rubber Mfg. Co. (Jeddah) churns out more than 5000 tonnes/month of finished plastics goods, and claims to be one of the largest plastics processors in the Middle East.

“Our father saw from the very beginning that Saudi Arabian goods could only be competitive if they provided the same or better quality than imported plastics goods,” says Fahad, now plant manager at the company. “Many times producers of low-cost Far Eastern processing equipment tried to convince him that price alone should be the deciding factor on new investments. Instead he maintained his motto, ‘go with the best,’ and therefore opted for a machine park consisting of top European brands.”

The company has more than 30 injection molding presses from name brands such as Netstal, Battenfeld, and Engel. The ISO 9001:2000 certified company also operates 15 blown-film lines from Reifenhäuser, Hosokawa Alpine, and Kuhne; 10 for coextrusion and five producing monolayer web.

The range of film products, produced in widths up to 2150 mm, runs from laminates, food packaging, agriculture film, cosmetic packaging, and shrink film, as well as conventional polyethylene shopping bags. Micro-embossed back sheet film for diapers and hygiene applications is also in high demand from the company. For such applications, Al Tayar serves a wide range of top name multinationals. Al Tayar also operates its own eight-color flexographic printing press to decorate products and took delivery of a 10-color unit at the beginning of January.

PVC pipe, hoses, and polyolefin conduit round out the offerings, with all of these products finding ready demand in the local market.

Raed Saud Al-Tayar, the company’s marketing/sales manager, says exports are playing a fairly large role today, making up about 40% of the company’s output, mainly to the Gulf Cooperation Council states, Russia, North and East Africa, and Near Eastern countries. “We also see a good potential in Eastern Europe and Latin America,” he says. That is one reason Al Tayar is expecting to expand its export market in coming years. To do that the Al-Tayar brothers were looking for potential distributors as they manned the company’s booth at the world’s largest packaging show, Interpack, in Düsseldorf, Germany, in late spring.

To maintain what the Al-Tayar family says is its competitive global competence and quality, it is forced to do its own operator and staff training to provide needed skills. Most operators come from the Far East but Fahad says it is becoming increasingly difficult to obtain work permits and visas for foreign staff as the government tries to spark interest in local youth to enter processing as a career.

The operation remains a family operation and that is how the brothers see its future. Only with close personal attention can the family ensure that the international quality standards customers expect are maintained, say the Al-Tayar brothers.