Mumbai, Mar 13: Indo Gulf Fertilizers & Chemicals Ltd (IGFCL) is estimated to touch a record high urea production of over 9 lakh tonnes at the end of March 31, 1998, as against 6.68 lakh tonnes in the previous year. This is despite an annual shutdown of around three weeks which the company has undertaken from March 1 this year.According to IGFCL managing director BN Puranmalka, the company has had a smooth operation at its Jagdishpur (Uttar Pradesh) urea plant in the last 20 months which has been the longest run. Along with production topping 9 lakh tonnes, the company expects a turnover of around Rs 600 crore for the year 1997-98. This will be a 27 per cent jump over the previous year's Rs 470 crore.
Besides IGFCL, Tata Chemicals is another company which has achieved a production of over 9 lakh tonnes of urea. In the previous year, production at the Jagdishpur plant was affected due to an unprecedented breakdown of the ammonia convertor basket, when the company was forced to advance its annualshutdown.
This had an impact on the production. The plant purea in 1995-96.
The company plans to shift to an alternate fuel like naphtha and furnace oil to the extent of 40 per cent of the total requirement. This, Puranmalka said, would be achieved after the plant re-starts production after taking the annual shutdown. Currently, the company is operating the plant with the flexibility of using an alternate fuel to the extent of 20 per cent.
Puranmalka said that even though the price of naphtha at Rs 810 per million kilo cal is almost double to that of natural gas at the HBJ pipeline, it is more efficient to use naphtha which averts loss of production. The company has an understanding with Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd for the supply of naphtha.
IGFCL had commissioned a substantial part of its Rs 1,850 crore copper smelter project with a capacity of 1 lakh tpa of copper cathodes coming up at Dahej in Gujarat last week. The copper smelter project is expected to commence production in early April,said Puranmalka.
The project is expected to add to the company's turnover an additional Rs 860 crore in the first year of operation (i.e. 1998-99) at a capacity utilisation of over 60 per cent.
