The long story of barges and ammonia transportation

The recent incident in which a leak in an ammonia tank headed for the Fertilizers and Chemicals campus takes memories back to the long history of the public sector company using Kochi’s backwaters to transport raw materials, including ammonia, to Cochin and Ambalamedu campuses.

The two barges that lie rotting and forgotten in the Muttarpuzha, near Manjummel, go back to the period when the public sector company was forced to end a contract with a Mumbai-based company for water transport of the commodity following allegations of financial losses and investigations into the charges.

FACT sources said that the contract with the Mumbai company for transport of ammonia was terminated on July 21, 2004. The original agreement for the water transport was signed in February 1997.

A former judge of the Supreme Court of India acted as the arbitrator after the transport company sought damages.

The judgement was passed in January 2014 against which FACT has now approached the Ernakulam District Court.

The story of water transport goes back even further with the company setting up a storage and handling facility for imported ammonia on the premises of the Cochin Port Trust.

But FACT set up a 900-tonnes-per-day ammonia plant, costing around Rs. 650 crore, on its Udyogamandal campus, following an order of the High Court of Kerala in early 1994. The order was passed on a Public Interest Litigation which sought the decommissioning of the ammonia storage facility on Willington Island. FACT’s ammonia plant was commissioned in 1998.

FACT sources said that water transport continued to be the safest method for bulk transportation. FACT continues to transport a part of its requirement for ammonia by road. FACT is also expected to commission one more barge for ammonia transport later this year in addition to the present one with a capacity of nearly 200 tonnes per day.