Faced with the shortage of natural gas, Tata Chemicals on Monday announced that it had decided to put on hold the Rs.3,800-crore expansion plan of its urea manufacturing unit at Babrala, Uttar Pradesh.
“We have been waiting for gas allocation for our second phase urea expansion plan at Babrala unit, which was scheduled to happen by October-November this year. As we have not got gas, we are holding back our plans,” Managing Director R. Mukundan told reporters at the launch of a new nutrient-based fertilizer Paras Farmoola.
The company plans to set up two more units to produce nutrient-based fertilizer with an investment of Rs.55 crore each. The company further said that rising costs of key energy sources — coal and coke — were putting pressure on soda ash.
About the capex in the current fiscal, he said, the company would be investing around Rs.400-500 crore.
Tata Chemicals is planning to roll out a nutrient-based fetilizer Paras Farmoola, across the country and will invest Rs.110 crore in setting up manufacturing units for it.
“We have developed Paras Farmoola for select crops in a specific region based on soil, crop and water sample analysis,” he said.
“We had undertaken a comprehensive land survey in Western Uttar Pradesh before launching there and we are now conducting similar exercise in West Bengal as it would be launched there soon,” General Manager Business Development Crop Nutrition and Agri Business B. B. Singh said.
