Revival of 5 sick urea units to add 72 lakh to production: GOI

The Union government is expecting an increase in urea production by 72.14 lakh tons on the back of revival of several sick urea units and is looking at drastic reduction at imports, informed Inderjit Singh, minister of state for planning (IC) and chemicals and fertilizers in the Parliament on Tuesday.

In a written reply to the Parliament, the minister informed that the government was reviving five closed fertilizer plants of Fertilizer Corporation of India Ltd (FCIL) and Hindustan Fertilizer Corporation Ltd. (HFCL) namely Talcher, Ramagundam, Gorakhpur and Sindri plants of FCIL and Barauni plant of HFCL by setting up new ammonia-urea plants of 12.7 lakh tons a year capacity.

“The commercial production from Ramagundam unit is likely to start by 2018 while from other four units, it is likely to start by 2020,” said Singh.


India is the world’s second largest consumer of urea, according to Urvisha H. Jagasheth, research analyst with Care Ratings. “India produced nearly 241.9 lakh tons of urea in FY17 while it imported 54.81 lakh tons. However, with increasing domestic production, the imports have been declining on a quarter–on-quarter basis,” she said.

Further, the Parliament was informed that under the provisions of New Investment Policy (NIP) -2012, dated January 2, 2013, Matix Fertilizers & Chemicals Limited (Matix) has set up a Coal Bed Methane (CBM) based greenfield ammonia- urea complex at Panagarh, West Bengal with the installed capacity of 1.3 million tons per annum.

“The commercial production of Matix has started on October 1, 2017. Chambal Fertilizers & Chemicals Limited (CFCL) has also proposed to set up a Brownfield project with capacity of 1.34 million tons per annum at Gadepan, Rajasthan, which is likely to start commercial production in January, 2019,” the minister said in a written reply.