• Investment World
• eWorld
• Catalyst
• Mentor
• Life
• Canvas
• Praxis
• Urban Pulse
• Brand Quest

Vinod Mathew

AHMEDABAD, June 16

INDIAN Petrochemicals Corporation Ltd (IPCL), whose expansion projects were grounded some three years ago ever since the company got featured on the disinvestment list, is showing signs of getting out of the inertia. On the anvil are a clutch of projects that the IPCL Chairman, Mr Mukesh Ambani, announced during the 34th AGM last week. As against the broad announcement of a 100 per cent increase in PVC plant capacity to 4,00,000 tpa, it is understood that the company is planning to put up a 2,00,000 tpa PVC plant at Dahej at a cost of around Rs 600 crore.

Chlorine, being the principal feedstock for PVC, it may be not surprising if the company looks to the nearby plant of Gujarat Alkalies and Chemicals Ltd (GACL) to supply the raw material.

It may be recalled that IPCL already has a regular supply line to the tune of 40,000 tpa of chlorine from GACL's Vadodara plant. With GACL currently in the throes of a debt restructuring exercise, it remains to be seen whether it opts to ink a sales contract for its 1,30,000 tpa of chlorine with IPCL or hive off the unit which also produces 1,10,000 tpa of caustic soda and also comes with a 90 MW captive power plant. Of course, all this is still a long cry away from IPCL's mega investment plans in the late 1990s which involved mothballing of the 1,30,000 tpa Vadodara ethylene cracker and putting up a 4,50,000 tpa naphtha cracker in its place. The Rs 1,800 crore project was appraised by ICICI but came to nought as the company got embroiled in disinvestment blues.

Now, the Reliance think tank has deemed it fit to augment the Vadodara cracker by 30 per cent to 2,00,000 tpa, mainly by way of debottlenecking. Quite a turnaround in strategy as it was only in February 2000 that the erstwhile Chairman and Managing Director of IPCL, Mr K.G. Ramanathan, had in an interview to Business Line, said, "There is no way the existing Vadodara cracker can continue for long, given its high level of energy inefficiency (6 million kilo calories per tonne as against 4 million kilo calories as at Nagothane)".

Some of the other investment proposals includes a Rs 2,000 crore mark-up at Dahej, taking up the cracker capacity from 3,00,000 tpa to 5,40,000 tpa and another Rs 1,000 crore at Nagothane envisaging an increase in capacity from 4,00,000 tpa to 5,40,000 tpa.

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication

Stories in this Section
Flood in Singareni mine; 17 feared drowned

Copyright © 2003, The Hindu Business Line. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu Business Line