Mangalore Chemicals and Fertilizers (MCF) Ltd has started urea production with natural gas as feedstock with effect from December 15.

Addressing presspersons in Mangaluru on Wednesday, Prabhakara Rao, Director (Works) of MCF Ltd, said the urea production started at MCF in 1976 with naphtha as the feedstock. As per the mandate of the government, MCF converted the production plant for the usage of natural gas as feedstock in 2014 with an investment of around ₹315 crore.

He said the natural gas is supplied as regasified LNG (RLNG) through the pipeline of GAIL from Kochi.

Also read: MCF plant resumes production

GAIL started supplying the natural gas to the MCF plant from November 23. The plant was on trial operation from December 12. The normal urea production with natural gas as feedstock started from December 15, he said. The company would require around 0.85 mscmd (million standard cubic metres per day) of natural gas for the plant.

Natural gas as a feedstock is more energy efficient and environment friendly, he said.

MCF has been manufacturing around 6.5-7 lakh tonnes of fertilisers per annum. The fertilisers include urea, DAP (diammonium phosphate), and other specialty plant nutrients.

He said the company was allowed to produce 3,79,500 tonnes per annum of urea when naphtha was the feedstock. With the conversion of the plant from naphtha to natural gas as feedstock, the company can go up to 4,30,000 tonnes per annum of urea production.

Asked about the other projects, he said the company is planning to take up an energy improvement project and increase the capacity of the plant.

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