BHUBANESWAR: The Rs 13,200- crore Talcher Fertiliser Limited (TFL) project is likely to be completed by September 2024, ayear behind schedule, Union minister of state for chemicals and fertilizers, Bhagwanth Khuba, informed the Rajya Sabha on Tuesday.
The project is an attempt to revive the shut fertiliser plant there. China’s Wuhuan Engineering Company Limited (WECL) is executing the project, the foundation of which was laid by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in September 2018. In reply to a question by BJD’s Sasmit Patra, Khuba said the project has been delayed by at least 12 months primarily owing to Covid-19.
The overall physical progress of the project is around 20.84%, he said. The WECL was given the lump sum turnkey contract (full responsibility to plan and build) of the coal gasification unit, the ammonia and urea plants of the project in September 2019 with the September 2023 deadline.
The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs approved the coal gasification by TFL in April last year. Broadly, the project will have a coal gasification unit, an ammonia plant with a design capacity of 2,200 metric tonnes per day (MTD) and urea plant (3,850 MTD) and associated facilities.
The unit will utilise about 2.5 million metric tonnes per annum of coal from the Talcher mines. In 2015, four public sector undertakings — the Gas Authority of India Limited (GAIL), the Coal India Ltd (CIL), the Rashtriya Chemicals & Fertilizers Ltd (RCF) and the Fertilizer Corporation of India Ltd (FCIL) — had formed the joint venture TFL to revive the plant. The revived project is being hyped as the first coal gasification-based fertilizer plant in India, in which coal is converted into synthesis gas to be used as fuel.
Spread over 700 acres, the orginal plant was up by FCIL in 1970. It became a sick unit in 1991 but continued operation until 2002 amid ups and downs. The Board for Industrial and Financial Reconstruction (BIFR) closed it in 2002 citing recurring losses.
