MEGlobal merges commercial ops in Dubai, ‘Europe not strategic’

LONDON (ICIS)–Ethylene glycol manufacturer and marketer MEGlobal is to merge its commercial operations and run them out of the Dubai office, in UAE., leaving only a handful of employees in the Swiss office in Horgen, a company source said on Friday.

“MEGlobal is putting the European and Middle East, India and Pakistan commercial operations together out of Dubai. We are in the transition process and the transfer will take place somewhere in Q2 [second quarter],” said Niels de Vet, global trading and sourcing, commercial director for Europe.

The team in Horgen consisted of 14 employees. This figure has already been cut down to seven and there will soon only be three or four people left to concentrate on order entries and some logistic matters, he said.

As of April, De Vet himself will be transferring his European accountabilities to his colleague in Dubai, Kamlesh Parwani, commercial director for Middle East, Turkey, India and Pakistan (METIP).

“We are not shipping MEG [monoethylene glycol] from Kuwait to Europe as it is too complicated and expensive. We stopped MEG deliveries in trucks… and we closed the terminals in the Mediterranean…,” according to De Vet.

Existing European ethylene glycol contracts that are in place will continue.

MEGlobal remains committed to the European market in the long term, but Europe is not a strategic market for the company, he concluded.

Established in 2004, MEGlobal is a joint venture between The Dow Chemical Company (Dow) of the United States and Petrochemical Industries Company (PIC) of Kuwait.

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