Chemicals and Allied Products Sector

Strengths
Opportunities

The Chemical Process Industry is currently producing Mineral fertilizers, industrial chemicals; Petroleum products (fuels, lubricants) and Cement, paints, adhesives and more.

Current Resource Based Industries: The phosphate / potash industries are evolving from mining / extraction industries that export phosphate rock and potash into vertically integrated organizations that are increasingly adding value to local production by manufacturing and exporting: phosphoric acid, diammonium phosphate, bromine, and aluminium fluoride.

Oil Refining Industry: The national oil products market was liberalized in March 2008. JPRC has made plans to develop capabilities and expand capacity to meet both growth in sales and changes in demand away from heavy fuel oil. As the refinery expansion plans are well advanced, the industry is not further analyzed.

Other Mineral Resource Industries: Cement is the largest, with general demand being met from current and planned developments. High grade silica is a notable new addition to Jordan’s mineral resources and provided opportunities for Jordan to expand into new chemical process industries.

The key industries within the sector had combined sales in excess of 1.5 billion JD (2005).These sales are accounted for by oil products (70%), phosphate / potash products (15%) and cement (14%).Other “mineral manufacturing products” account for less than 1% of total revenues.

Strengths 

• Jordan possesses significant mineral resources that are or could be the basis for several downstream chemical industry clusters: phosphate, potash, silica, and uranium among others. 
• Several of the mineral deposits have high levels of purity that facilitate processing to high value added products

Opportunities 

• Further processing of already established mineral extraction products: Glass manufacture and silicon manufacture from silica. 
• Processes to make high value metals: Copper and uranium. 
• Phosphate Industry Replication: Jordan’s phosphate reserves are extensive & much greater than reported internationally and / or currently covered by licenses. Global demand is forecast to continue growing, particularly in Asia, which Jordan is well placed to service. The potential exists to create a second organization to help prove and exploit untapped phosphate reserves and to invite new investors into Jordan to work with Government proxies to realize the opportunity. 
• Magnesium Plant Restructuring Project: Restructure JORMAG’s magnesium plant from production of refractory grade product to production of feedstock for export to magnesium metal manufacturers. 
• Production of Light Cement: Utilization of Jordan’s naturally occurring zeolites for the production of specialist light cements. 
• Manufacture of silicon from silica: Development of silica mining and processing in the last 2 years provides high grade silica that could be feedstock for manufacture of silicon to meet escalating demand from the photo-voltaic industry. 
• High quality float glass plant: The quality of silica now being produced provides an opportunity to start a high quality float glass plant. 
• Uranium Processing: Utilizing local deposits as the resource base. 
• Copper Processing: Processing local production to intermediate stage for sale to final processors (electrolytic plants).

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