MAKKAH: When the 2026 FIFA World Cup kicked off at Mexico City’s legendary Azteca Stadium, fans looked up and saw a piece of Saudi Arabia.
FPC Industries, a subsidiary of FIPCO, supplied more than 4,000 sq. meters of PVC fabric for the venue’s new “Red Crown” — the sweeping canopy that rings the top of the stadium and has become one of its defining visual signatures following a major renovation.
The achievement caps a rapid ascent for the company, which only entered the technical woven fabrics business in 2019. At the time, FIPCO Industries CEO Abdullah Al-Harbi told Arab News that the field was controlled by just five manufacturers worldwide, and tender documents for major international projects routinely required European-made products.
FPC Industries, a subsidiary of FIPCO, supplied more than 4,000 sq. meters of PVC fabric for the venue’s new “Red Crown.” (Supplied)
Price was never the hurdle, Al-Harbi said; precision was. Structural tensile fabrics must hold their color, strength and technical performance for as long as two decades while exposed to punishing weather at the highest points of a structure.
Persistence paid off. Years of showing up at international trade fairs gradually opened doors, and FPC has since completed projects in more than 20 countries, among them the UK, France, Germany, Slovenia, Russia, Poland and the US.
“We succeeded in turning Saudi industry from a mere price competitor into a trusted technical choice,” Al-Harbi said, noting that many international consultants now write Saudi manufacturing into their approved specifications alongside European producers; a clause that once excluded the Kingdom entirely.
He also credited the Saudi Export Development Authority, which backed the company’s presence at global exhibitions, connected it with prospective buyers, and helped it to secure the international certifications that unlocked high-profile contracts.
FIPCO Industries CEO Abdullah Al-Harbi. (Supplied)
The Azteca commission carries particular symbolic weight. The stadium is the only venue in history to host three World Cup opening matches — 1970, 1986, and now 2026 — and FPC won the Red Crown contract after the project’s consultants vetted its ability to meet the job’s complex technical demands.
For Al-Harbi, the real prize is not the contract’s value but what it signals. The point was that a Saudi-made product could sit at the very crown of the stadium, weathering shifting conditions while keeping its color, tension and durability intact. To be sure of that, the company tested the materials exhaustively, even air-freighting samples to the University of Essen in Germany to verify that they met the highest international benchmarks.
Putting a Saudi-made “Red Crown” atop the stadium that opened the 2026 World Cup, he said, is a measure of how far the national industry has come and an incentive to push further, toward a real share of the global structural-fabric market and a firmer place for the “Made in Saudi” stamp in the world’s biggest projects.
