Oswal Chemicals to set up urea plant in state

Hyderabad, Sept 21 (INN): The Giant Oswal Chemicals and Fertilisers Limited, pioneer in setting up fertiliser plants, has offered to set up a fertiliser plant in Andhra Pradesh. Chairman and Managing Director of Oswal Chemicals and Feritlisers Abhay Oswal on Tuesday met Chief Minister K Rosaiah and discussed the issue in detail. Andhra Pradesh being an agrarian economy and State is in set for a record cultivation is in need of fertilisers. Hence a fertiliser unit will be in the best interest of the State. Mr Oswal proposed to set up a unit with 1.2 million ton per year capacity urea plant based on natural gas with estimated investment of Rs.5,000-00 crore.

Their request for gas allocation for the project has already been forwarded by the Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilisers to ministry of Petroleum and Natural gas. The Plant will employ about 5,000 labour force during construction phase and about 1,000 skilled and unskilled manpower during normal plant operations. Mr Oswal said the Unit will also establish a 100 mw capacity power plant using surplus steam from urea manufacturing facilities supplemented by coal. The Group controls ownership interest in the coal mines in Indonesia having more than 100 million tons of coal reserves.

The Company also proposed to set up a one million ton capacity Di-Ammonium Phosphate Plant with an investment of Rs 2,000 crore. Phosphoric acid required for the plant will be imported from Syria Arab Republic. The company has already tied up phosphate rock in Syria for production of phosphoric acid. The ammonia requirement for the plant will be met out of surplus ammonia of urea plant. The plant will employ about 3,000 labour force during construction phase and 700 skilled and unskilled manpower during normal plant operations.

The Chief Minister agreed to positively consider the proposal of Oswal Chemicals and Fertilisers and clear the proposal at the earliest. This Company has a one million capacity ammonia urea complex with required utilities and offsite facilities at Shahjahanpur in Uttar Pradesh with investment of 1002 crore in 1995. This company has a two million ton per year Di-Ammonium Phosphate plant at Paradip, Orissa with investment of Rs.2,000-00 crore in 2000. This plant is the single largest manufacturing facility of DAP in the world.

The Oswal Group has put up one gas-based ammonia plant of 2,200 TPD based at Western Australia with 500 million US dollar investments. Adviser, Industries, Peter Hassan, Principal Secretary, Industries, BP Acharya, Principal Secretary to CM, Sam Bob and other officials attended the meeting.