KOCHI: Public sector oil refiner Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd. (BPCL) has begun preliminary discussions on setting up a Rs 5,200 crore polypropylene project in Kochi.
Top BPCL officials, including CMD G Krishnakumar, director (finance) Vetsa Ramakrishna Gupta, director (refineries) Sanjay Khanna, and executive director (Kochi refinery) Abhai Raj Singh Bhandari met Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan in Thiruvananthapuram on Tuesday in connection with this. The BPCL top brass also met Industries Minister P Rajeeve and Chief Secretary Dr V Venu, IAS, and appraised the above projects.
The project will facilitate the production of homopolymer-grade polypropylene (PP), used extensively in the manufacture of packaging films, sheets, boxes, containers, bags, homeware, home care, personal care, and articles of day-to-day usage, which are expected to be developed in the vicinity of the BPCL's Kochi
refinery at Ambalamedu.
The Union government had allotted 170 acres to BPCL in July 2019 by selling the land of FACT, the public sector undertaking in fertiliser production, lying adjacent to the oil refiner's Ambalamedu plant. Besides this, another 170 acres that BPCL took on a long lease from Kinfra (Kerala Industrial Infrastructure Development Corporation) will be utilised for the proposed project.
A detailed feasibility report is being finalised by the project consultant, Engineer India Limited. In a Facebook post, Minister Rajeev said construction work on the project will commence after the clearance of the BPCL’s board. He said that BPCL's Krishnakumar expressed confidence that the project would be completed in 40 months. The polypropylene project will be a major step towards realising the state’s aspiration of becoming a hub for petrochemical industries.
The project was mooted after BPCL scrapped its Rs 11,130-crore polyols project in February 2022 after the PSU oil refiner found that polypropylene was more feasible and promising. Polypropylene (PP), also known as Polypropene, is the second-most widely produced commodity plastic (after polyethene). According to BPCL sources, polypropylene has a much bigger demand, especially in South India.