Panipat refinery to get a rubber plant
New Delhi   08-Jan-2011


IOC Chairman and Director B M Bansal performs
the ground-breaking ceremony of a new rubber plant at the Panipat refinery on Friday

Adding yet another dimension to Panipat petro-chemical hub, IndianOil (IOC) performed the ground-breaking ceremony of the first state-of-art Styrene Butadiene Rubber (SBR) plant on the refinery premises. IOC Chairman and Director (business development) Mr. BM Bansal performed the brief ritual.

Bansal said that the rubber plant would be set up as a joint venture with the Taiwan State Rubber Corporation (TSRC) Corporation of Taiwan and the Marubeni Corporation of Japan.

Mr. BN Bankapur, who is chairman of Indian Synthetic Rubber Ltd (ISRL), said that it had been decided to the setup the plant at Panipat because the refinery already had the Naphtha Cracker Complex (NCP) to provide butadiene feedstock for rubber production.

The decision to set up the plant was taken IOC Board of Directors in November last year. SBR is predominantly used for production of car tyres and light trucks. Besides, making house ware mats, drain board trays, shoe sole, chewing gum, food container sealants, conveyor belts, sponge articles and others. It is also used in pharmaceutical, surgical, and sanitary products along with food packaging. IOC's move is crucial as the country has only two poly-butadiene rubber (PBR) units at IPCL, Vadodara, while there was no SBR units in operation, currently.

Wei-Hua Tu, president and CEO, TSRC and Neoya Iwashita, executive officer of the Marubeni Corporation also participated in the ground-breaking ceremony. He expressed hope that the project would be a huge success and would bring prosperity to the state and the country.

IOC will have a 50 per cent equity participation in the said joint venture, while the Trimurti Holding Corporation (for TSRC) would be holding 30 per cent and the Marubeni Corporation would have 20 per cent participation. The plant would have a capacity to produce 120 KT of rubber annually. The IOC chairman also inaugurated the Product Application and Development Centre (PADC) that was brought up next to Naphtha Cracker Complex as a part of IOC's business development strategy.