Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Ltd (MRPL) has awarded Larsen & Toubro (L&T), two large project orders for Rs 1344 crores, including a 3.7 MMTPA diesel hydrotreating unit and a 70,000 TPA hydrogen generation unit (HGU) in the ‘Phase - III Refinery Project’ at Mangalore. The projects will enhance capacity and upgrade fuel quality to meet Euro IV specifications.

MRPL, a subsidiary of Oil & Natural Gas Corporation Ltd (ONGC) has existing refinery facility with a capacity of 12 MMTPA at Mangalore. As part of Phase - III expansion projects, with an objective to increase refinery capacity and also to improve the diesel fuel quality to achieve Euro IV specifications, MRPL has awarded these orders on lumpsum turnkey basis to L&T.

Engineers India Ltd has been retained by MRPL to provide services for project management consultancy for both the projects.

Axens, France is the process licensor for the first project, i.e., diesel hydrotreating unit. For the second project, i.e., hydrogen generation unit, L&T will utilise the world renowned hydrogen technology of Haldor Topsoe AS, Denmark, who will act as L&T’s Process Licensor for this project.

Dr S Hariharan has recently been ap-
pointed as Chief Operating Officer of Solaris Chemtech Industries Ltd, a member company of the Avantha Group. He has been assigned the responsibility of taking the organizational capabilities of Solaris to the next level by using his leadership skills.

He intends to articulate and execute business strategies and operational plans to aggressively transform and grow the company to US $750m with an EBITDA of US $175m by 2015 in line with Avantha Group’s business growth plans. The position reports to the Avantha Group Corporate Management Team headed by Gautam Thapar.

 NABL certification for Clariant’s corporate product safety lab

Clariant Chemicals (India) Ltd’s corporate product safety lab received the prestigious ISO 17025 certificate of accreditation from the National Accreditation Board for Testing and Calibration Laboratories (NABL), Dept of Science & Technology, Govt of India recently.

Located at Kolshet in Thane, near Mumbai, Clariant’s Corporate Product Safety (CPS) Laboratory received the globally-recognized accreditation for its chemical testing. This milestone comes within two years of creation of the laboratory and is seen as a major endorsement of the quality of testing performed at this world-class facility.

The laboratory was primarily set up to cater to the requirements of Clariant. However, it now performs tests, within the scope of its accreditation on products manufactured by Clariant affiliates as well. It ensures that the products comply with the company’s own stringent guidelines and the health, safety and environmental legislation of the various countries. This includes the new European chemicals regulation REACH.

Textile, leather and paper products, dyes and pigments, together with various industrial and fine chemicals are all tested in the laboratory. Theability to test in-house has also enabled the company to make significant annual cost savings. Mounting awareness and concern for consumer and environmental protection, together with increasingly stringent statutory regulations, retailer standards and various eco-labeling requirements, have made product safety testing a mandatory pre-requisite for doing business in today’s market. With globalization, meeting various norms, ensuring country-wise registration and providing compliance assurance has become vital for sustainable business growth.

The lab also conducts third party testing on demand. The CPS Lab has been accredited for 23 different tests. ISO 17025 accreditation not only assures established management systems, but also proves competency in testing and assures quality, reproducibility and accuracy of results.

Venu Srinivasan, Managing Director, Sundaram-Clayton Ltd and
Chairman & Managing Director, TVS Motor Company Ltd, has been elected as the President of CII for the year 2009-10. He succeeds K V Kamath as the new CII President.

An engineer with a Masters’ Degree in Management from Purdue University, USA, Mr Srinivasan is the Honorary Consul General of Republic of Korea, Chennai, and a Member of the Prime Minister’s Council on Trade & Industry. Mr Srinivasan has also held positions as President of The Automotive Research Association of India and President, Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers.

Srinivasan was chosen as a ‘Star of Asia’ by Business Week International, along with the Chairman of Toyota, Japan. He is the first Indian industrialist to receive an honorary ‘doctorate degree in science’ from the University of Warwick, UK, for excellence in manufacturing and contribution in the field of technology and R&D. He also received the Jamshetji Tata Life Time Achievement Award 2004 from the Indian Society for Quality. Hari S Bhartia, Managing Director, Jubilant Organosys is the Vice President, CII .

India’s premier Exhibition & Network Event for fine and specialty chemicals and pharmaceuticals industries, InformEx India 2009 took place at the University Grounds in Ahmedabad in March 2009. The 3-day, hi-profile event is the first and only incarnation of InformEx outside of USA, which has a 25 year history of serving manufacturers and buyers of specialty and fine chemicals from all over the world. With a tagline which says ‘Chemistry you won’t find anywhere else’ InformEx India could boost the rapidly surging chemical and pharmaceutical industry of Gujarat.

A workshop on Microreaction Technology was held at National Chemical Laboratory (NCL), Pune jointly with German institutes during March 4-5, 2009, as part of NCL’s diamond jubilee year program. The workshop focused on exploring the various facets of microreaction technology for different applications.

Dr Amol Kulkarni, NCL scientist and coordinator of the workshop, said that a new tool of microreaction technology has emerged in the last few years for

expediting R&D for process development and process intensification. Microreactors are miniaturized assemblies which allow continuous production of chemicals by providing significantly higher transport rates. It has received wide acceptance from the research labs and chemicals industry in the western world and Japan. The Indian chemical, pharmaceutical and allied industry needs to proactively take lead in understanding the new technology and deriving the associated benefits. NCL with proven strengths in organic synthesis, process development, reaction engineering and flow modeling has established a significant research program on microreaction technology. He briefed the audience on the importance and applications of microreaction technology and how they can be used for commercial production. Their relevance to industry and the demand of the technology for future was also emphasised.

Welcoming the delegates Dr S Sivaram, Director, NCL in his inaugural address said that the microreactor technology workshop would help in understanding their applications in industry and R&D. It will lead to sharing of knowledge amongst the scientists and will lead to widen use of the technology in defined applications. Substitution of established technology is never easy. Therefore uniquely relevant applications of this technology has to be demonstrated. The goal of NCL is to build capacity and capability for R&D in this area and partner with industry on diverse applications. Dr. Sivaram hoped that the workshop would infuse more confidence amongst industry and further interest them towards exploring the technology for defined applications. Simultaneously, the academic scientists will need to identify gaps in this area of technology and work towards filing these gaps through focussed scientific research.

Prof V Hessell, Director, IMM and Workshop Chairman initiated the first session with the presentation on "Sustainability through green processing: Novel process windows intensify micro processing and applications in catalysis".

Dr Reddy’s Labs to focus more on key markets abroad

Dr Reddy’s Laboratories will now focus more on key markets in its global generics business. It has decided to exit from small distributor-driven markets which have an overall contribution of less than one per cent to the top line. India has become Dr Reddy’s global manufacturing hub after shifting manufacture of key molecules from Betapharm (Germany) to India.

By realignment of its global generics /finished dosages strategy Dr Reddy’s will increase its focus on USA, Russia. US and German markets which account for 90% of the global generics revenue (for nine months ended Dec 2008).

Aimed at consolidating Novartis’ economic ownership and give it more freedom to operate in the Indian market, the Swiss company plans to increase stake in its Indian subsidiary to 90% from the existing 51 per cent. The Indian arm is the only listed entity Novartis has outside its headquarters in Basel.

Novartis has Rs 475 crore cash on its books and has good brands like the Rs 140 crore pain killer Voveran.

The 5th BASF Boron Conference
was held in Hyderabad between 3-5th March 2009. The slogan "From lab to launch – Discover new horizon" generated enthusiasm among the 160 odd experts from around the world, who discussed current trends and new applications of boron compounds in fine chemicals synthesis. The conference aimed to strengthen the dialogue between science and users from industry to identify new solutions. "The conference aims at creating a platform for scientific exchange in applied boron chemistry", said Dr Ulrich Bueschges, Group Vice President, Inorganic Specialties BASF SE, who inaugurated the conference.

Major topics covered include, applied boron chemistry in pharma, synthesis, stereo and regioselective reactions, cross coupling reactions and the great importance of boron compounds for the synthesis of active ingredients for the pharma industry.

Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) has signed the Gas Sales and Purchase Agreement (GSPA) with the customers in fertilizer sector for supply of natural gas to be produced from the KG-D6 block. The GSPAs were signed with 12 customers in the fertilizer sector for supply of approximately 15 million standard cubic meters (mmscmd) natural gas at 15 different urea manufacturing facilities.

The key highlights are:

The gas price in GSPA is as per the formula approved by the Government.

The supply of gas is expected to commence shortly. East-West Pipeline built by Reliance Gas Transportation Infrastructure Ltd (RGTIL) would be used to transport gas from KG-D6 block to the fertilizer companies, by inter-connecting with pipelines of GAIL and GSPL.

The fertilizer companies also signed Gas Transportation Agreement (GTA) with RGTIL.

The following fertilizer companies will be supplied natural gas from KG D6: Nagarjuna Fertilizers & Chemical Ltd, Rashtriya Chemicals & Fertilizer Ltd, IFFCO, KRIBHCO, GSFC, GNFC, Tata Chemicals Ltd, National Fertilizer Ltd, Chambal Fertilizer & Chemicals Ltd, KRIBHCO Shyam Fertilizers Ltd, IndoGulf Fertilizer & Shriram Fertiliser & Chemicals Ltd.

Speaking on the occasion, Mr. PMS Prasad, President and CEO (Petroleum), RIL, said, "With the signing of GSPAs, KGD6 gas would reach all gas-based urea manufacturing units in India, and would eliminate the deficit in gas supply being currently faced by these units. The supply of natural gas to these units would result in additional production of approximately 7 million tones of urea per annum thereby reducing India’s import dependence and also reducing subsidies by the Government."

RIL would sell gas to the companies at $4.20 per million British thermal unit (mmBtu), as per the contract. However, the actual cost of the KG basin gas to the fertilizer companies would be higher due to the additional transportation charge, which would be levied depending on the distance and the terms of contract with the gas transporting firms such as Gail and Gujarat State Petronet.

Larsen & Toubro (L&T) and Atomstroyexport (ASE) of Russia have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for co-operation between the two companies for Russian design reactors VVER 1000. The MoU was signed by M V Kotwal, Member of the Board ans Sr Executive Vice President of L&T and Dan Belenkiy President ASE in Moscow.

The MoU will form the basis of co-operation between the companies and address needs for equipment and other services arising from the agreement signed between India & Russia on 5th December 2008, for four additional reactors KK3-6 at Kudankulam, Tamil Nadu and other Russian reactors at new sites in India.

According to the signed document L&T and ASE will develop co-operation in the construction of Kudankulam new power units, as well as during construction of plants under the Russian designs with VVER reactors at new sites in India, and also in other countries.

This MoU with ASE represents a major step for L&T into VVER component and systems manufacturing and services. It will enable L&T as well as ASE to utilize indigenous capabilities for nuclear power plants including supply of equipment and systems, valves, electrical & instrumentation products and fabrication of structural and piping and construction for the Russian VVER plants in India and in other global locations. Both L&T and ASE are optimistic about the emerging opportunities and see the possibility of future co-operation, in India as well as abroad.

Lupin acquires 51% stake in Multicare Pharma

Its sixth acquisition in 18 months, Lupin has picked up 51% stake in Philippines’ Multicare Pharmaceuticals, a branded generic-drugs company. The acquisition was made through internal accruals without divulging financial details.

"In the past too, Lupin has made acquisitions that are not too large, but are meaningful and can turn EPS accretive," said Lupin’s Mg Director, Dr Kamal Sharma. Lupin has been registering products in the Philippines and the latest acquisition will help it launch its products in that market.

This acquisition marks Lupin’s entry into the $2.5 billion pharmaceuticals market in Philippines, at present dominated by multinational companies. Under the agreement, Mr Romeo Sy, Multicare’s Founder, will continue to lead the company as President.

INEOS Technologies has reached agreement with Brahmaputra Cracker and Polymer Limited (BCPL) to license the InnoveneTM G process for the manufacture of polyethylene in a plant to be built at Lepetkata, District Dibrugarh, Assam in north east India.

The plant will have a production capacity of 220,000 tonnes per annum in a single gas phase reactor. It will be capable of manufacturing a wide range of LLDPE and HDPE grades suitable for use in a variety of downstream film, rotomoulding, extrusion, raffia and injection moulding applications. It will form part of the Assam Gas Cracker Project, a grass roots integrated petrochemical complex being set up by BCPL. Process design of the plant is well underway.