Jurong Island Today

Today, Jurong Island is home to over 88 leading petroleum, petrochemical, specialty chemical and supporting companies from around the world, including the top 50 Global Companies like Air Liquide, Air Products, Akzo Nobel, Asahi Kasei, BASF, Celanese, Chevron Philips, Ciba Specialties Chemicals, Dainippon Ink & Chemicals, Dupont, Eastman Chemical, ExxonMobil, Huntsman Corp, Mitsui Chemicals, Shell, Sumitomo Chemical, Teijin and Rohm and Haas.

History

Let us travel back in time and see the birth of jurong island! ((:

Before the late 1960s, Pulau Ayer Chawan, Pulau Ayer Merbau, Pulau Merlimau, Pulau Pesek, Pulau Pesek Kecil, Pulau Sakra and Pulau Seraya, seven islands south of Singapore were only inhabited by Malay villagers, who lived in a simple lifestyle. Before Jurong Island was developed, the chemical industries in Singapore had the good fortune of a firm foundation laid by petroleum refineries, which were set up in Singapore during the 60s and 70s. This lead to the decision of three oil companies to house their facilities on the islands- Esso in Pulau Ayer Chawan, Singapore Refinery Company in Pulau Merlimau and Mobil Oil in Pulau Pesek in the late 1960s, and early 1970s.




These petrochemical industries were seen as economy boosters, and the government decided to attract more of these industries to set up their factories in Singapore. A decision was then made to merge the seven islands together to form one large island to house these industries. JTC Corporation was appointed the agent of the Jurong Island Project in 1991. The company planned and coordinated with various government agencies, and with feedback from the industrialists, they delivered the infrastructure and services to the island, which included land through large-scale reclamation, roads, drains, utilities, and others. Now, many leading petrochemical companies are located on Jurong Island. Both the industries and our country have reaped benefits from Jurong Island. For the industries, it is the comprehensive infrastructure and facilities that our country provides, which attract them and cause them to invest their industries here. For our country, it is the profits, which the industries make, which will help our economy grow and progress.

Social and Economic reasons

As mentioned above, the reasons for the development of Jurong Island lies heavily with the economy. By building Jurong Island, chemical companies will invest in Singapore, adding money to the country. Singapore’s chemicals industry is a key pillar of our manufacturing sector, contributing 23% to our manufacturing output in 2002. Today, Singapore is recognized as one of the key chemicals hub globally, standing alongside other major hubs such as those located in Houston and Rotterdam. Also, Singapore gets to open a new field of industry and enterprise for her people by providing services to the chemical companies, and also creating more jobs for the people. The development of Jurong Island is emblematic of the Singapore Government's determination to develop the economy so that our people will have rewarding jobs and a higher standard of living. The government has reduced their income tax rates and lowered business costs to continue to build up local businesses and attract foreign investment and multi-nationals to do business here in Singapore. EDB and JTC Corporation have also started to develop a major logistics hub called the Banyan LogisPark on Jurong Island. This will provide integrated logistics support to the rapidly growing number of chemical and petrochemical companies on the Island. The completion of the Chemical and Process Technology Centre on Jurong Island this year represents another major milestone. The Centre caters to pre-employment training for students graduating from our Polytechnics and Institutes of Technical Education as well as to in-employment training for chemical and life sciences companies.

OK, guess you guys are having an info-overload...so to put simply:


Social reasons:

1. The planning of the Jurong Island began with the idea of Synergy where individual islands could be combined into one main landmass for the purpose of building a petrochemical hub.

Economic reasons:

1. Singapore chemical industry delivered an encouraging performance in 2003 as the output rose by 23 per cent to $39.1 billion and value-added output (VA) grew from 9 per cent to $5.2 billion. This increase was despite the challenges of rising raw prices and high energy costs faced by the industries globally. Hence, the excellent performance boosted the chemical industry share of manufacturing output over 26 per cent, up from 22.6 per cent in 2002. This strengthens its position as the second largest industry after electronics. Thus, they realised that the development of Jurong Island will improve the economy.

2. The petrochemical output soared by 38 per cent to $12.1 billion and the value-added output surged by 29 per cent to 1.4 billion in 2003. This gave the EDB (Economic Development Board) the confidence to invest and plan out Jurong Island to further boost Singapore’s economy.

3. The combining of seven small islands in one to produce a petrochemical hub makes sense as it would involve making use of Singapore’s largest petroleum base to produce key feedstock for making other petrochemical specialty chemicals and fine chemicals through the cluster development strategy.

4. As there is a strong growth of Asian nations, particularly China, the EDB (Economic Development Board) wanted to enhance Singapore’s position as a regional oil hub to meet the needs of the rapidly expanding energy of Asia. This makes Jurong Island very important as being the regional oil hub will benefit the economy of Singapore tremendously.

5. Most chemical plants has also developed and increased its output by quite a lot in 2003, such as Specialty Chemicals, Mitsui Chemicals and many more.



TADA!!! YAY!..get the point now?

Vision

Vision of wanting to turn Jurong Island into a symbol of national enterprise

A determined team of island builders and marketers successfully developed and sold these former plots of sea as valuable real estate for the chemical business. The vision is to make the impossible possible. Today, Jurong Island, tomorrow, the beacon of the chemical world is what Jurong Island aim to become.

Jurong Island embodies Singapore's vision of developing a strong and vibrant Global Chemical Hub to take us into the next century.Jurong Island is the result of a bold plan of the Singapore Government in the mid-1990s to support their strategic objective to be a global chemical hub and to develop an integrated petrochemical industry complex on the island. The Singapore Government’s vision was to bring together a collection of upstream and downstream petrochemical plants that supply one another, create synergies for each other, and make viable the whole complex ecology of different operations and products, where a single plant could not survive. Now, the vision of wanting to turn Jurong Island into a symbol of National Enterprise has almost been fulfilled. Today, Jurong Island is well known among the chemical and petrochemical industries as an excellent base for their operations in Southeast Asia. It is truly the symbol of National Enterprise.