About 70 Maharashtra sugar mills gear up for oxygen manufacturing

To meet the climbing demand from customers for clinical oxygen to treat Covid-19 people, about 70 sugar mills in Maharashtra are gearing up for production oxygen.

“This is a timely move taken by mills in Maharashtra. About 25 mills are previously in the approach to established up oxygen plants and we are concentrating on about 60-70 sugar mills that have fiscally carried out pretty very well. The vast majority of these mills are in rural parts and the demand from customers for oxygen in this article could be satisfied by sugar mills,” claimed Prakash Naiknavare, MD, Nationwide Federation of Cooperative Sugar Factories (NFCSF).

He additional, “Mills will need to modify distilleries for oxygen production. Also, mills will have to consider care that the commitments of ethanol supply are satisfied. With oxygen production, mills are shouldering social obligation. Also, this could be a company product for the mills.”

Naiknavare additional that NFCSF is heading to go over oxygen production with sugar mills in other States.

Orders pour in

BB Thombare, President of West Indian Sugar Mill Affiliation (WISMA), informed BusinessLine that 15 mills which includes private and cooperative mills have placed orders for skid-mounted oxygen production units. “We have approached producers in China, Taiwan as neighborhood producers claimed they would involve 8-ten months to fulfil the orders. Each and every plant has the capability to refill ninety-one hundred oxygen cylinders every day which will be supplied to federal government and private hospitals at a nominal cost,” claimed Thombare.

He additional that mills have placed orders for 600 oxygen concentrators.

WISMA has appealed to sugar mills aross the state to established up one particular plant each individual and procure 25 oxygen concentrators to meet the oxygen necessity in their localities.

Not long ago, Nationalist Congress Bash (NCP) Chief Sharad Pawar had held a conference of millers to go over oxygen production in mills. Of the 190 sugar mills that began crushing this year in Maharashtra, 167 mills have closed their crushing operations and 23 sugar mills are continue to functioning.

Company product?

Past calendar year, as Covid-19 scenarios multiplied, lots of sugar mills began sanitiser production. According to business gamers, mills benefited from sanitiser production despite offering the product or service at small costs.

According to some of the vital gamers in the business, sugar mills have no process to manufacture oxygen and need molecular sieve modification in ethanol plant for filtering oxygen. “What occurs to the investment decision when there will be no demand from customers for medicinal oxygen?,” one particular of the senior business gamers reiterated talking to BusinessLine.

Vasantdada Sugar Institute (VSI) headed by Sharad Pawar, NFCSF and WISMA are jointly performing on a extensive-phrase strategy on oxygen production so that mills continue to be in the company even immediately after the demand from customers for clinical oxygen recedes.