BAKU, Azerbaijan, July 29. Azerbaijan’s State Oil Company (SOCAR) set out to digitalize one of its most strategic industrial assets. With bold leadership, deep workforce upskilling, and a rewired approach to digital and operations, SOCAR Carbamide transformed performance—and earned global recognition as a World Economic Forum Digital Lighthouse.
This is stated in the material of the international consulting company McKinsey.
The publication notes that SOCAR recognized that long-term competitiveness — for both the company and Azerbaijan —could not rely on scaling hydrocarbon production alone, and that innovation would be key to improving productivity. As part of its 2035 strategy, it made digital transformation a core pillar, looking to modernize operations, strengthen non-oil industries, and build world-class technical capabilities. “We were not simply installing technology,” says SOCAR President Rovshan Najaf. “We built a new operating model grounded in a systematic transformation approach—one where data, AI, and people operate as a unified ecosystem.”
Among many candidates, SOCAR Carbamide was selected to launch the transformation. The plant produces ammonia and urea—critical agricultural inputs—and is Azerbaijan’s only domestic fertilizer producer.
McKinsey recalls that launched in 2019, the plant still had untapped potential, and as geopolitical disruptions strained agricultural supply chains, boosting local production of fertilizer became urgent. In 2023, SOCAR and McKinsey launched a 2.5-year transformation to increase output, improve gas efficiency, build talent, and create a model for broader industrial impact.
In less than three years, SOCAR and McKinsey, with its AI arm QuantumBlack, developed 42 in-house digital and AI solutions, achieving significant financial and operational impact. Some of the flagship solutions are showcased below. “We not only adopted the most advanced industry solutions available but also built in-house solutions on top of them to address the unique needs of plant teams,” says SOCAR’s Chief Technology Officer Murad Abdullayev.
AI-based production variability optimization. To stabilize and increase production, the team moved away from waiting for operators to react to deviations and implemented a real-time variability diagnostics and optimization engine that continuously monitors key metrics and adjusts more than 150 control settings. Combined with operational changes, this shift increased throughput by 21 percent and reduced yield losses. AI copilot assists engineers by reviewing approximately 20,000 equipment manuals and supports root cause analyses—reducing unplanned maintenance by 66 percent.
Particular attention was paid to personnel training. The company launched the SOCAR Digital Academy as a structured upskilling program for frontline operators, engineers, and supervisors—and paired it with a change program to make the new ways of working stick. Within 2.5 years, approximately 70 percent of plant employees gained new digital capabilities. The program generated more than 40 AI-driven use cases—many proposed and implemented by frontline teams themselves. “The Digital Academy gave people confidence, and they stopped seeing digital as something external,” says SOCAR Vice President of Human Capital and Inclusion Ziba Mustafayeva. “With the successful adoption, we developed a blueprint that can be scaled across our other sites.”
As core use cases matured and frontline capability grew, SOCAR shifted its ambition from transforming a single plant to building an enterprise-wide industrial AI capability. The company launched the Caspian AI Institute—a regional hub dedicated to developing, industrializing, and deploying AI solutions within the energy industry. The institute now employs more than 60 AI and digital professionals and has developed over 30 AI products and 15 AI research patents, scaled across SOCAR. “By institutionalizing talent, standards, and product development, we turned a plant-level transformation into a national industrial capability—positioning Azerbaijan to compete at the frontier of industrial AI,” says SOCAR Chief Data Officer Azad Huseynov.
In January 2026, the World Economic Forum admitted SOCAR Carbamide into the Global Lighthouse Network, which recognizes manufacturing sites that achieve exceptional results by combining advanced technologies with strong leadership, workforce development, and measurable impact across productivity, sustainability, resilience, and talent.
“To stay competitive, we had to rethink how plants operate—from energy efficiency to decision-making speed,” says SOCAR Vice President of Refining and Petrochemicals Anar Mammadov. “Digital transformation was the lever that would move us from good performance to global leadership as part of our overarching strategy.”
For SOCAR, the recognition carried special weight. It marked the first WEF Lighthouse in Azerbaijan and the wider Central Asia region. SOCAR Carbamide also became the first urea fertilizer facility globally to receive the designation.
Today, SOCAR Carbamide exports 90 percent of its production across the region, supporting sustainable agriculture and food security. The plant now covers 100 percent of domestic nitrogen fertilizer demand and contributes significantly to Azerbaijan’s non-oil export revenue.
For SOCAR, the Lighthouse designation marks more than a milestone for one plant. It signals what Azerbaijan’s industrial future can look like.
SOCAR Carbamide now stands not only as a fertilizer producer but as a global industrial AI champion in its field—and proof that such transformation can be delivered at home with local talent, strong leadership, and global ambition.
