Thaindian News

New Delhi, March 3 (IANS) Tata Chemicals Tuesday said it has completely overhauled its production processes to increase the capacity of fertilisers including urea and ammonia at its Babrala facility in Uttar Pradesh to 1.15 million tonnes, a top company official said Tuesday.
“With our new debottlenecking process, we would be able to increase our production capacity from 864,600 tonnes to 1.15 million tonnes. We are also looking at doubling the production in the near future,” Tata Chemicals executive director Kapil Mehan told reporters here.

“But this would all depend on the availability of the gas, which is a big question,” Mehan said, adding that the company was in talks with Reliance Industries among others for additional natural gas.

The company currently receives only 60 percent of the gas it requires for its plants at Dabrala, Haldia in West Bengal and Mithapur in Gujarat, he said.

Mehan also said it has a subsidy account of Rs.47 billion, and that the government still owed it Rs.6.5 billion. Subsidy is paid to fertiliser companies in lieu of their selling nutrients to farmers at below production or import costs.

Tata Chemicals, the executive director said, imports seven million tonnes of urea at Rs.40,000 per tonne. “But we keep our prices one-fourth of the imported cost,” he added.

India’s state-owned and private sector fertiliser companies together produces about 20 million tonnes of urea annually.