• Asia's Demand for Petrochemicals, Advanced Materials and Specialty Chemicals Spell Opportunities
• Widening Singapore’s lead as a Global Energy and Chemical Hub
• Enhancing Competitiveness and Sustainability of Jurong Island
• Trusted Base for High-Tech Manufacturing and R&D
• Access to Skilled Talent
• Managing Global Business from Singapore

Mega growth trends like rapid urbanization, changing demographics and the rise of the Asian middle-class are shifting demand growth for products and services to Asia. With greater demand for transportation fuel, as well as petrochemical and specialty chemical products, the Asia growth story creates a window of opportunity. As one of the world's leading energy and chemical hubs, Singapore is constantly working to stay at the forefront of the industry's advancement with our focus to develop competitive feedstock for petrochemicals, advanced materials as well as specialty chemicals.

Together, Singapore's energy and chemical industry contributed S$57 billion of the manufacturing output in 2009 (28% of Singapore’s total manufacturing output).

 

Today, Singapore is recognised as a world-class energy and chemical hub with excellent connectivity to end markets, and a trusted location for investors to execute their projects safely and successfully. 

As the chemical industry moves into its next phase of growth, one of Singapore's strategies is to anchor a critical mass of olefin capacity. This will allow for new manufacturing activities in higher value chemical chains such as C4s and C5s. Shell has started up its largest integrated oil and petrochemicals cracker in May 2010. Together with the ExxonMobil cracker which will come on-stream in 2012, these two projects will double Singapore's ethylene capacity to 4 million tonnes per annum by 2012 which will help catalyze a new wave of high value downstream investments for Singapore's chemical industry.

As the centrepiece of the energy and chemical industry, Jurong Island is home to close to 100 leading global petroleum, petrochemicals and specialty chemicals companies. Its dedicated "plug-and-play" infrastructure enables companies to enjoy synergies through product integration while enjoying cost savings through shared third-party utilities and services. Moving forward, Singapore is embarking on "Jurong Island version 2.0", a whole-of-government initiative that will create new game-changing differentiating advantages to drive the next phase of growth for the industry. Through close partnership with the industry, the initiative will focus on new infrastructure developments and system-level optimization of valuable resources like energy, carbon, water and land. Jurong Island will also be a "living lab" for companies to develop and demonstrate integrated innovative solutions, such as tapping on waste heat to power productive processes and converting "waste" carbon dioxide into useful products. 

Just as proprietary manufacturing processes are key to the competitiveness of petrochemicals and advanced material companies, product differentiation is critical to the growth of specialty chemicals. Singapore is therefore investing heavily in R&D infrastructure and seeks to work with the industry to create new beginnings in Singapore.  Given our strong respect and track record for intellectual property rights protection, Singapore is a choice location for companies to develop and commercialize proprietary technologies and first-to-world manufacturing processes.

Talent is the key enabler for this complex and dynamic industry.  Singapore offers a strong pool of engineering and management talent, as well as skilled technicians, from a variety of distinguished academic establishments.  Furthermore, Singapore offers companies an attractive location to draw and source top talent from all over the world, resulting in a motivated, productive and world-class workforce for the chemical industry.

Given our excellent infrastructure, global connectivity, manpower capabilities and talents, Singapore is the ideal business location for companies to undertake a diverse range of operations. This includes manufacturing, R&D, trading to supply chain management and increasingly, headquarters activities. With their headquarters based here, companies find that they are better positioned to serve customers and manage their operating entities, not just in Asia but globally.