State-owned companies such as Rashtriya Chemicals and Fertilizers (RCF) and GAIL will form two joint ventures to revive the closed urea plant at Talcher in Odisha with an estimated investment of Rs.9,000 crore, Fertliser Minister Ananath Kumar said here on Friday.
RCF, Coal India, GAIL and Fertilizer Corporation of India Ltd. (FCIL) will form the joint ventures.
The first joint venture (JV) will be for setting up of an upstream coal gasification unit and the second JV is for a urea-cum-ammonia nitrate complex.
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Talcher will be the first plant in the country using coal gasification technology.
“The plant will have a capacity of 1.3 million tonnes per annum of urea and 3.3 lakh litres of ammonium nitrate per annum and around Rs.9,000 crore will be invested in this project with an aim of generating employment,” Mr. Kumar told reporters here.
He added that signing of a memorandum of understanding (MoU) between PSUs would be held before November. The Minister was speaking after the meeting with Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan and Secretary, Fertilisers, J. K. Mohapatra.
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Mr. Pradhan said: “With the setting up of this plant, our aim is to generate employment opportunities in North-Eastern parts of the country.”
This is perhaps the first greenfield plant in the fertiliser sector in almost in the last 10 years.
Mr. Kumar said work was also going on to revive the Ramagundam fertilizer plant. There were also plans to set up 2-3 fertilizer plants near the Jagdispur-Haldia gas pipeline.