Indo Rama hikes polyester capacity

09 February 2004 00:01  [Source: ACN]

INDO Rama Synthetics’ planned polyester plant at Butibori near Nagpur in Maharashtra, India, will now have a capacity of 280 000 tonne/year instead of the original 175 000 tonne/year. The project’s startup has also been pushed back to September 2005 from mid-2004.

The new plant will now produce 140 000 tonne/year each of polyester staple fibre (PSF) and partially oriented yarn (POY). The original plan was for it to produce 145 000 tonne/year of PSF and 30 000 tonne/year of textile-grade polyester chips (ACN 24 June 2002).

Purified terephthalic acid feedstock for the planned plant will come from Indian Oil Corp, while monoethylene glycol feedstock will come from local sources and imports.

A company source said Indo Rama had decided to pursue a larger project not only because of anticipated bullish demand for PSF and POY in Asia, but also to take advantage of India’s favourable customs duty for imported plant and machinery.

With the larger project, the cost has increased from Rs4.9bn (US$108m) to Rs9bn. Though design work started a year ago, construction work started only at end-2003. Kvaerner Power Gas is the engineering contractor, while Zimmer is the licensor.

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