CMCI, established in Dammam's First Industrial City in 1984, is exhibiting at Big 5 Construct Saudi with a construction chemicals range covering admixtures, waterproofing, grouts, protective coatings and repair systems. The company runs three Saudi plants and states it has supplied more than 300,000 tonnes into over 3,000 regional projects.
CMCI, the Dammam construction chemicals manufacturer, is on the floor at Big 5 Construct Saudi this week with a portfolio that has been made in the Kingdom for more than four decades, which in a market now organised around local content is a position worth more than it once was.
Construction Material Chemical Industries was established in 1984 in the First Industrial City in Dammam by the Khalifa Al Gosaibi group, initially to manufacture concrete chemicals for a construction sector that was then heavily dependent on imported specialist materials. It now runs three manufacturing plants in Saudi Arabia serving the domestic market, the wider Gulf and the Middle East, and states that it has supplied more than 300,000 tonnes of product into over 3,000 projects across the region. Its quality management system is certified to ISO 9001 by Bureau Veritas.
The product range covers most of the chemistry a concrete structure consumes across its life. At the front end are concrete admixtures, the plasticisers, retarders and hydration-control systems that determine whether a mix remains workable long enough to be placed properly in Saudi summer conditions. Behind those sit high-performance waterproofing systems, epoxy mortars, adhesives and coatings, advanced grouting systems for equipment and machinery baseplates, specialised protective coatings, joint sealants, complete concrete repair systems, and curing and sealing compounds.
That is a more coherent list than it appears. Durability in the Gulf is decided by a small number of failure mechanisms: chloride and sulphate attack on reinforcement in coastal and sabkha ground, thermal cracking from placing concrete at high ambient temperature, and water ingress through joints and construction interfaces. Admixtures, curing compounds, waterproofing and repair systems are the four commercial responses to those mechanisms, and a manufacturer that supplies all of them can hold a specification conversation across the whole structure rather than a single package.
The market context is favourable on volume and demanding on performance. Saudi cement sales were up 9 per cent year on year in June at 4.39 million tonnes, and the Kingdom's construction output is forecast to grow 6.2 per cent this year to around SAR 232.14 billion. Supply of the base material is not the constraint. What projects are buying from the chemicals sector is the difference between concrete that meets a cube strength and concrete that lasts a design life, which is why the concrete stream in the Big 5 conference programme is framed around improving quality rather than around availability.
Procurement policy adds a second layer. The Local Content and Government Procurement Authority holds a minimum 40 per cent local content threshold for public tenders and phased in higher minimums on its mandatory product list in February, which tends to favour a supplier with Saudi plants, a Saudi industrial licence and locally held stock over an importer working from a regional warehouse.
CMCI sits within the industrial portfolio of Khalifa A. Algosaibi Investment, alongside the fireproofing manufacturer Arabian Vermiculite Industries, the steel foundry SICAST, the road marking company ROMAC and the training institute ASAS. The group's presence at the show is a reasonably complete cross-section of Saudi construction manufacturing.
The competitive pressure in the segment is real, and it comes from both directions: international construction chemicals groups have been strengthening their Saudi positions, most visibly through Master Builders Solutions' acquisition of the Dammam and Jeddah admixtures producer Arkaz earlier this year, while regional manufacturers compete on lead time and local technical service. For a buyer walking the halls, the differentiators are test data, project references inside the Kingdom, and whether a technical representative will attend a site when a pour goes wrong.
Big 5 Construct Saudi runs at Riyadh Front until 2 September.