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Kolkata, July 3

A fire at around midnight on Wednesday led to shutdown of the naphtha cracker plant of Haldia Petrochemicals Ltd, according to sources. Naphtha cracker is the mother unit feeding the downstream plants of the petrochemicals facility. HPL authorities declined to comment on the extent of damages, status of production in naphtha cracker and the downstream units and the time to be required to restore normalcy. “The naphtha cracker unit tripped due to apparent malfunctioni ng of some control systems and the furnace caught fire. The fire was controlled. There is no injury to any personnel,” a HPL statement said. Sources, however, told Business Line that the incident might force the company to shut down the cracker unit for a number of days thereby impacting the production of downstream units. Considering that HPL clocked Rs 7,250 crore sales turnover during the last fiscal, the company’s production loss due to shutdown might amount to approximately Rs 20 crore a day on an average (at last year’s product price level).

— Our Bureau

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