Contract Awarded as Finolex Moves Forward with PVC Expansion in India

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Researched by Industrialinfo.com (Industrial Information Resources, Incorporated; Houston, Texas). Finolex Industries Limited (Pune, India) is moving forward with its plans to expand polyvinyl chloride (PVC) production (PEC 89000708) at their production site in Ratnagiri, India (Plant 1054137), as first reported by Industrialinfo.com in October of 2003, see related Industry Alert: Finolex Will Expand PVC Production in India, Supporting India's Projected $6 Billion in Future Chemical Processing Projects. Finolex has selected the international firm, Krupp Uhde GmbH (Dortmund, Germany), as the engineering and construction firm to guide the project from design to completion.

Uhde will utilize their office in Mumbai, India and has licensed Hoechst AG's (Frankfurt Am Main, Germany) technology for the production of PVC. The expansion is estimated to cost approximately $110 million and will increase their current production rate of 135,000 metric tons a year to 270,000 metric tons a year. Construction is scheduled to commence in the second half of this year.

The expansion project will require the upgrade and modification of existing equipment, as well as installing Hoechst PVC production technology. Hoechst's PVC processing begins with ethylene dichloride (EDC), which is converted into vinyl chloro monomer by an oxy-chlorination process, and then polymerized into polyvinyl chloride, which will be used in the manufacturing of pipes and fittings.

Finolex Industries, which is a division of the Finolex Group, uses the PVC produced to manufacture PVC pipes and fittings at the Ratnagiri complex, which was commissioned in 1994. Currently, Finolex is the largest PVC pipe manufacturer and the third largest PVC producer in India and the PVC production accounts for 70% of Finolex's revenue. They produce pipes and fittings to be used in agriculture, plumbing, casing, SWR, and telephone ducting. The latest product introduced by Finolex is the "Ringfit" pipe, which is an elastomeric sealing ring used to connect pipes. Finolex produces 32,850 tons a year of PVC pipes and 735 tons a year of fittings. Finolex might add a VCM (vinyl chloride monomer) production unit in the future to alleviate raw material costs.