Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications
Thursday, May 09, 2002
Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications Thursday, May 09, 2002 |
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Corporate
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Performance Iffco Kandla puts quake behind to record robust production Harish Damodaran
KANDLA, May 8 THE disruption caused by the massive Gujarat earthquake has not come in the way of Indian Farmers Fertiliser Cooperative Ltd's (Iffco) plant here recording an all-time high output of complex phosphatic nutrients during 2001-02. During the year ended March 31, 2002, Iffco's Kandla unit produced 20.60 lakh tonnes (l.t.) of bulk fertilisers, comprising 11.30 l.t. of di-ammonium phosphate (DAP with N:P:K content of 18:46:0), 4.01 l.t. of `Grade I' (10:26:26) and 5.29 l.t. of `Grade II' (12:32:16) complexes. In phosphatic nutrient terms, this translated into 7.93 l.t. As against this, total bulk fertiliser production stood at 17.03 l.t. in 2000-01 and 19.12 l.t. in 1999-2000, with corresponding phosphatic output amounting to 6.64 l.t. and 7.09 l.t., respectively. "The earthquake impacted our output during both 2000-01 and 2001-02, as all the six production streams suffered heavy damage, necessitating re-commissioning at a total cost of over Rs 60 crore,'' said Mr U.S. Awasthi, Managing Director, Iffco. While the first two streams were re-commissioned on March 26, 2001 (60 days after the quake), production from streams 3-4 and 5-6 could commence only from April 8 and May 3, 2001. "Although we managed to re-start operations in a remarkably short time, we lost more than 90 days before full output could be restored. But in spite of all this, our capacity utilisation in 2001-02 touched a record 109.4 per cent,'' Mr Awasthi said, adding that this was achieved by making use of the time lost to carry out routine plant maintenance operations. (A fertiliser plant usually shuts down for 30 days of the year for servicing.). The Kandla plant's six streams have an annual production capacity of 19.74 l.t. of bulk fertilisers or 7.25 l.t. phosphatic equivalent. With phosphate output of 7.93 l.t., the plant accounted for 20.5 per cent of the country's total production of 38.60 l.t., making Iffco the largest producer ahead of Oswal Chemicals and Fertilisers Ltd (OCFL). The latter's plant at Paradeep, Orissa - commissioned in April 2001 and billed as the world's largest grassroots phosphatic fertiliser project - produced 5.19 l.t. of phosphatic nutrients during last fiscal. In terms of DAP alone, OCFL's plant produced 11.29 l.t. - almost the same as the Kandla unit - with these two units having a 22.2 per cent share each in the country's total output of 50.94 l.t. in 2001-02. The other major DAP producers included Godavari Fertilisers and Chemicals Ltd, Kakinada (in which Iffco has a 24.9 per cent stake, with production of 5.58 l.t.), Gujarat State Fertilisers and Chemicals (6.78 l.t. from its Sikka and Vadodara plants), Hind Lever Chemicals Ltd, Haldia (5.22 l.t.), SPIC, Tuticorin (3.02 l.t.), Indo-Gulf Corporation Ltd, Dahej (2.83 l.t.) and Paradeep Phosphates Ltd (2.13 l.t.). The Kandla unit of Iffco currently imports most of its raw material requirement of merchant-grade phosphoric acid and liquid ammonia, while a small part is sourced domestically from Birla Copper's facility at Dahej (phosphoric acid) and Iffco's own ammonia plant at Kalol, Gujarat. This is unlike many other plants which produce their own phosphoric acid through import of rock phosphate and decomposition of the same by sulphuric acid. "Manufacturing phosphoric acid here does not make sense for two reasons. Firstly, it is a highly polluting process. Secondly, the bulk of our phosphoric acid is imported from the joint venture plant at Darou, Senegal with Industries Chimiques Du Senegal (ICS), in which we have a 14.3 per cent stake. Besides, we are planning a similar joint venture project at Tunisia,'' Mr Awasthi added. For handling the imported raw materials, Iffco has set up a Rs 24-crore captive liquid cargo jetty at the Kandla port for berthing of ships carrying phosphoric acid and ammonia. The 110-metre long jetty has a capacity to unload two million tonnes of liquid cargo per annum, with the phosphoric acid being pumped from the ship to an unloading line going from the jetty to the individual storage tanks.
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