Balco Air Products at Pappinisseri near here which provides oxygen cylinders to hospitals, has decided to scale up the production following an increase in demand due to the surge in COVID-19 cases in Kannur and Kasaragod districts.
The production unit has a capacity to supply 300 oxygen cylinders every day. However, with an increase in COVID cases, the demand has increased to 500 cylinders, said Dileep P. Nair, CEO, Balco Air Products.
Speaking to The Hindu , he said that earlier, the company was getting empty cylinders from Mangaluru. However, after they stopped supply, the company was meeting the increasing demand by getting cylinders from Kozhikode and Palakkad.
“We were planning to expand and had already installed machinery to produce about 200 cylinders and now this can be put to use to meet the demand,” he said. He said the Balco plant produced oxygen through an air separation system. Such oxygen was 99 percent pure, he said.
Mr. Dileep said the new facility would collect liquid oxygen in a large tank and fill the cylinders. It would not be difficult to get oxygen even to small hospitals in Kannur and Kasaragod districts.
14 cylinders an hour
The plant was producing 14 cylinders in an hour. However, with the increasing requirements, it would be scaled up to 30 cylinders per hour, he said.
