Betting on the business that made its private sector rival Reliance Industries (RIL) a behemoth, state-owned Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) today unveiled the blueprint for doubling revenues from the petrochemicals business to Rs 15,000 crore during the next fiscal.
IOC, the nation's largest refining and fuel marketing company, launched its 'Propel' range of petrochemicals with its Chairman B M Bansal stating that the firm intends to capture 20 per cent market share in polymers in 2011-12.
Polymers are used to manufacture plastic and other materials and Reliance is the market leader in this area. Having begun as a purely petrochemicals firm, and then doing a upstream integration into refining, it finally got into exploration and production business.
"We had a turnover of about Rs 3,000 crore from petrochem business in 2009-10. This year, we expect this to rise to Rs 6,000 crore. Next year, we will do Rs 15,000 crore," Bansal told reporters here.
He said that by next year IOC's recently commissioned naphtha cracker plant adjacent to Panipat refinery would operate at full capacity, enabling it to grow market share from 5 per cent in the 3.8 million tonnes polymer market.
Beginning with low-investment projects for high-value products such as methyl tertiary butly ether (MTBE) and Butene-1 at its Koyali refinery in Gujarat, IOC went on to commission the world's largest single-train kerosene-to LAB (Linear alkyl benzene) plant at Koyali in 2004. It was followed by an integrated PX/PTA plant at Panipat in 2006.
While linear alkyl benzene (LAB) is used to manufacture detergents, PX/PTA (paraxylene/purified terephthalic acid) are used as polyester intermediates.
The latest to go on stream is a world-class, Rs 14,400 crore naphtha cracker complex, a mother plant for polymers (plastics), set up at Panipat this year.
Bansal said IOC is setting up a petrochemical complex at its upcoming grassroots refinery at Paradip in Orissa. "To be commissioned by 2011-12, the 15 million tonnes per annum refinery will have facilities for production of front-end petrochemicals, including paraxylene, polypropylene and styrene."
A 120,000 tonnes per annum styrene butadine rubber (SBR) unit, the first in India, is underway at Panipat, he said, adding that the project is being built through joint venture with TSRC Corp of Taiwan and Marubeni Corp of Japan to further strengthen IOC's presence in speciality petrochemicals.
"These initiatives are designed to catapult IOC into the top three petrochemicals players in southeast Asia in the long-term," Bansal said.
