Industries secy reviews Angul plant construction

Bhubaneswar: State industries secretary Hemant Sharma on Wednesday chaired a high-level meeting with senior officials of the Talcher Fertilizers Limited (TFL) to expedite construction of a greenfield urea plant in Angul district.
Issues related to handing over land, shifting of utilities and other ground clearance works were discussed in the meeting. Sharma said instructions were issued to authorities concerned like the revenue divisional commissioner, Sambalpur, and Angul district collector to sort out the issues related to ground clearance.
“As the groundwork for the project has been started, we expedited the process for clearance of the site.We are reviewing the progress of the project and issues pertaining it every alternate month. We can say that the project is on track,” Sharma told TOI.
Issues related to evicting encroachments from the railway corridor, pipeline and township, signing of water drawing agreement and connection of 220 KV line, among others, were also discussed in the meeting.
The TFL is a joint venture of four central PSUs — Rashtriya Chemicals and Fertilizers (RCF), GAIL (India) Ltd, Coal India Ltd and Fertilizer Corporation of India Ltd (FCIL).
Fertilizers, especially urea, will be produced through coal gasification route in the new plant, official sources said.
The joint venture has been formed to revive the erstwhile Talcher plant of the Fertilizer Corporation of India Ltd (FCIL) by setting up the greenfield urea unit with an installed production capacity of 12.7 lakh metric tonnes per annum (LMTPA). The new plant will be developed with an investment of Rs 13,277 crore.
The project will improve availability of fertilizers to farmers and will save transport subsidy for supply of urea in the eastern part of the country. It would also help in reducing urea imports to the tune of 12.7 LMTPA leading to savings in foreign exchange.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi had laid the foundation stone of the project in September 2018 which is expected to be completed by December next year.