Middle East Construction
A construction chemicals plant opens in Ras Al Khaimah to serve the UAE and GCC
By Staff Writer | 4 September 2026
JK DryChem Industries has opened a 5,000 square metre plant in the Al Ghail Industrial Zone of Ras Al Khaimah Economic Zone, making liquid admixtures, prepared additives, dry mix materials and coatings for the UAE and GCC first, with exports to Africa to follow.
JK DryChem Industries LLC, a subsidiary of the Indian cement producer JK Cement, has opened its manufacturing facility in Ras Al Khaimah Economic Zone. The plant covers 5,000 square metres and will make construction chemicals and additives: liquid admixtures, prepared additives, dry mix materials and coatings. The opening ceremony was attended by Dr Raghavpat Singhania, group managing director of JK Cement, and Ian Hunt, chief customer experience officer of the economic zone, with senior executives from both organisations.
With operations now under way, the facility will first serve customers across the UAE and the GCC, with plans to extend exports to Africa and the rest of the world. Its site in the Al Ghail Industrial Zone gives it access to the emirate's industrial and logistics infrastructure for moving raw materials in and finished products out.
What the product range means on site
Admixtures, additives and dry mix materials are the part of a concrete or mortar specification that most often arrives from abroad with a lead time attached. A plant inside the UAE producing them shortens that lead time for a contractor pouring in Ras Al Khaimah, Dubai or Abu Dhabi, and it changes where the supplier's warranty and technical support sit. Neither the company nor the economic zone has published the plant's production capacity, its investment value or its headcount, so the scale of that effect cannot yet be put in numbers.
A locally made admixture still has to be approved against the project specification and the mix design like an imported one. What changes is the distance between the batching plant and the technical representative who has to answer for it.
Seeing JK Cement's facility move from plans on paper to an operational manufacturing plant in a short time is an important milestone. Investments like this add depth to Ras Al Khaimah's industrial base by bringing new production capabilities and stronger regional supply chains into the emirate.
Ramy Jallad, Group Chief Executive of Ras Al Khaimah Economic Zone
The company's own account
Dr Singhania said the launch was an important step in strengthening the company's presence in the UAE and in expanding its construction chemicals business across international markets, and that local manufacturing gives it greater proximity to customers, stronger supply capability and a platform for growth. He also thanked the economic zone for its support during the development of the facility.
The economic zone frames the opening against the building, property and infrastructure programmes under way across Ras Al Khaimah, which it expects to lift demand for construction materials, and it presents the plant as an example of a manufacturer setting up local production to serve that demand and a wider regional market.
What has not been published
No construction contractor, build cost or construction period for the plant has been released, and no date has been given for the start of exports beyond the GCC. The description of the move from paper to an operating plant as a short time is the economic zone's, and the length of that period has not been stated. A contractor specifying construction chemicals on a UAE job this year has a new local source to price, and the first question to put to it is capacity, which is the one figure the announcement leaves out.