India’s BPCL firms up $500m to build new PU plant in Kochi

KOLKATA (ICIS)–India’s Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited (BPCL) has firmed up an investment plan of about $500m (€375m) to build a polyurethane (PU) plant at its refinery located at Kochi in southern India, a company official said on Monday.

BPCL was currently in talks with Manali Petrochemicals Limited (MPL) to be a 50% partner in the project as also for supply of feedstock propylene oxide (PO) for the project, the official added.

The capacity of the project has not yet been decided and would be firmed up by the  pre-feasibility report currently under preparation. The company will take into account the raw material availability from BPCLs’ refinery and proposed downstream units at the same location, the official added.

He, however, said that the plant capacity will be one of the largest in the country, which was almost entirely import dependant for its domestic PU demand of 250,000 tonne/year.

About 150 acres of land will be made available for the PU plant by BPCL in close proximity to its Kochi refinery which was currently under expansion to 15.5m tonne/year from 9.5m tonne per year, the officials said.

The PU project had been scheduled for completion around 2017 following the expansion of its refinery in 2015, he added.

BPCL had tied up with LG Chem to construct a 500,000 tonne/year propylene plant at its Kochi refinery but LG Chem will not be associated with the PU plant, the official added.

BPCL, a predominant oil refiner and marketer, had drawn up an aggressive strategic plan to invest across upstream and downstream projects and to implement this plan in the shortest possible time, the official said.

The conversion technology for production of PU and marketing services will be sourced from MPL, the official said.

MPL, with grass root plants in southern Indian province of Tamil Nadu was a leading manufacturer of Propylene oxide (PO), Propylene Glycol (PG) and Polyols.

($1 = €0.75)

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