FACT join hands with RCF

Kochi: Kochi-based fertiliser major Fertilisers and Chemicals Travancore Limited (FACT) has formed a joint venture with RCF Building Products Limited of Mumbai.

The new entity – FACT-RCF Building Products Limited – will produce building material including partition walls, utilising the gypsum stored at the two units of FACT. Union minister for chemicals and fertilisers, Ram Vilas Paswan, laid the foundation stone for the joint venture's production line.

Speaking on the occasion, Paswan said the government would soon come out with a compact fertiliser policy that primarily aims at enhancing domestic production of chemicals based fertilisers.
'The country is now dependent on imported fertilisers due to lower domestic production. The new policy will envisage the possibility of increasing investments in the production sector of chemicals fertilisers,' he said, adding that the Centre would also consider the proposal to supply sulphur at subsidised rates to FACT as the huge increase in global prices of sulphur put FACT into deep trouble.

Owing to this, a large number of plants at the Udyogamandal division of FACT had been closed for some weeks and the company was trying hard to tide over the crisis. FACT had tied up with Indian Potash Limited (IPL) for ensuring regular supply of inputs worth Rs 400 crore on a monthly basis.

Paswan said the government would moot a multi-faceted project to bail out the 64-year-old company from its present crisis.

FACT will also start a container freight station in association with the Central Warehousing Corporation (CWC) and Container Corporation of India (CCI).

FACT and CWC have already signed an MoU for the new project, work on which would start shortly.

'A new urea plant with an outlay of Rs 5,000 crore and an initial production capacity of 100,000 tonne a year will be constructed by 2012 when the proposed LNG terminal would be operational at Kochi,' Paswan said.

The gypsum-based plant would give a new fillip to FACT as over 4 million tonne of gypsum stocks have piled up.

Earlier, Korean company Joongang had approached to start a joint venture for producing gypsum-based products, which, however, did not take off. RCF is having a similar unit in Maharashtra, which uses Australian technology.