Striving for a sustainable future

Sadara Chemical Company, a joint venture between Saudi Aramco and Dow Chemical, has a multi-billion-dollar chemical complex in Jubail Industrial City II in Saudi Arabia

Since its inception sustainability has been a top priority for Sadara Chemical Company. Keeping Kingdom’s Vision 2030 and the United Nations’ sustainable development goals in mind, the company has developed an integrated strategy, which will be implemented by 2025. The sustainability strategy designed by the company consists of five key pillars with clearly defined objectives and key performance indicators.

These five pillars are Governance and Integrity, Occupational Health and Safety, Climate Change and Natural Resources Conservation, Business Growth and Operational Excellence and People and Community.

Besides these five pillars, Sadara also set 10 additional goals along with more than 20 key performance indicators to ensure that it is moving in the right direction in its sustainability journey.

The company firmly believes that adhering to a sustainability-based framework will enable it to address any unforeseen challenges and will also enbale it to adopt innovative solutions in future.

Sadara has also developed a framework that will serve as its sustainability guide moving forward, and this has also been integrated with the company’s management system, known as ODMS, or the Operating Discipline Management System.

Following its continuous efforts to achieve sustainable goals, the company received a certificate from the Gulf Petrochemicals and Chemicals Association (GPCA) in 2020, recognizing it as an Operation Clean Sweep® (OCS) Partner — the first company in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) to implement this program.

The company received commendable success in reducing hazardous industrial wastes and also in its recycling efforts, which helped it to progress further in supporting the much talked circular economy concept.

As a result of its continuous efforts to promote sustainability practices within the company, it secured the first position in the Royal Commission for Jubail and Yanbu (RCJY) Environmental Performance Award for 2020.

The award was also given for recording the best environmental performance in the primary Industry category.

According to Sadara, the award reflects the company’s collective efforts and effective implementation of its policies in the field of environmental management.

Sadara claims that it has taken all necessary steps to improve its performance in achieving the environmental goals by optimizing the usage of natural resources. Besides this, the company has made tremendous efforts in adopting the circular economy concept. This was also reflected in Sadara’s ongoing support for the local community in alignment with sustainable development goals and Vision 2030.

Recently, the company secured the first position in the King Khalid Award for Sustainability for profit organizations and companies for 2021. Sadara claims the award reflects the company’s performance in governance, business development, environmental protection and community participation, by applying the sustainability standard in all its businesses actitvities.

The King Khalid Award is one of the programs of the King Khalid Foundation, designed to be an effective and comprehensive change and development tool focused on honoring social initiatives, non-profit institutions, and private sector organizations in the Kingdom.

The award targets distinct initiatives that provide innovative solutions for social challenges in the country.

COVID 19 Response

Following the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, the company launched a reassessment exercise, in which all the employees of Sadara including top management worked together to refresh and reshape its 5-year sustainability strategy.

Through this comprehensive exercise, the company recognized more than 162 key issues. Using materiality assessment methodology, Sadara’s team filtered, shortlisted and grouped these in such a way that they were transformed into action plans.

As a result, the company was able to overcome the pandemic challenges with positive results on both social and economic levels. It also enabled the company to maintain high quality performance. The company attributed this success to its employees, customers and partners, who displayed commitment and hard work during the time of crisis.

During the pandemic, the company partnered with Sipchem to donate high-quality ethanol to local manufacturers for making sanitisers, which were provided free of charge to the government. The company also donate $1.3 million to the Health Endowment Fund, in support of the Kingdom’s efforts to combat the pandemic.

As a result of its support to the ministry of health, the health sector & the Kingdom’s efforts in combating the COVID-19 outbreak, the company also won the HRH Princess Seetah bint Abdulaziz Award for Social Work in the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) category for 2020.