From Saudi manufacturing facility flooring to Global Cup degree … FPC material crowns Mexico’s Azteca Stadium
MAKKAH: When the 2026 FIFA Global Cup kicked off at Mexico Town’s mythical Azteca Stadium, fanatics seemed up and noticed a work of Saudi Arabia.
FPC Industries, a subsidiary of FIPCO, equipped greater than 4,000 sq. meters of PVC material for the venue’s new “Red Crown” — the sweeping cover that rings the highest of the stadium and has change into one among its defining visible signatures following a significant renovation.
FPC Industries, a subsidiary of FIPCO, equipped greater than 4,000 sq. meters of PVC material for the venue’s new “Red Crown.” (Provided)
Value was once by no means the hurdle, Al-Harbi mentioned; precision was once. Structural tensile materials will have to cling their colour, energy and technical efficiency for so long as twenty years whilst uncovered to punishing climate on the very best issues of a construction.
Patience paid off. Years of revealing up at global business festivals progressively opened doorways, and FPC has since finished initiatives in additional than 20 nations, amongst them the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Slovenia, Russia, Poland and the USA.
“We succeeded in turning Saudi industry from a mere price competitor into a trusted technical choice,” Al-Harbi mentioned, noting that many global experts now write Saudi production into their licensed specs along Ecu manufacturers; a clause that after excluded the Kingdom fully.
He additionally credited the Saudi Export Construction Authority, which sponsored the corporate’s presence at world exhibitions, hooked up it with potential consumers, and helped it to safe the global certifications that unlocked high-profile contracts.
FIPCO Industries CEO Abdullah Al-Harbi. (Provided)
The Azteca fee carries explicit symbolic weight. The stadium is the one venue in historical past to host 3 Global Cup opening fits — 1970, 1986, and now 2026 — and FPC gained the Purple Crown contract after the mission’s experts vetted its skill to fulfill the activity’s advanced technical calls for.
For Al-Harbi, the true prize isn’t the contract’s price however what it indicators. The purpose was once {that a} Saudi-made product may sit down on the very crown of the stadium, weathering transferring prerequisites whilst maintaining its colour, pressure and sturdiness intact. To make certain of that, the corporate examined the fabrics exhaustively, even air-freighting samples to the College of Essen in Germany to make sure that they met the very best global benchmarks.
Hanging a Saudi-made “Red Crown” atop the stadium that opened the 2026 Global Cup, he mentioned, is a measure of ways some distance the nationwide business has come and an incentive to push additional, towards an actual percentage of the worldwide structural-fabric marketplace and a less attackable position for the “Made in Saudi” stamp on the planet’s largest initiatives.
