Ioc To Enter Lpg Mart In Mumbai

Indian Oil Corporation will soon introduce Indane, its liquid petroleum gas (LPG) brand, in the city.

The corporation is entering the Mumbai market, hitherto domain of Hindustan Petroleum Corporation and Bharat Petroleum Corporation (BPCL). It is setting up a 6,000-tonne bottling unit at Vasai to cater to the growing demand of the metro. With an investment of over Rs 5 crore, the unit will bottle 4.2 lakh cylinders per month. The bottling plant will commence operations in early 2003.

O N Marwaha, director, marketing, IOC, said: "With a view to feed this market, we are setting up a LPG bottling plant in Vasai near Mumbai. We are in the process of appointing seven distributors for the Mumbai market."

The unit is being set up as per the corporation's target under the Ninth Five Year plan. The company is investing around Rs 800 crore towards developing infrastructure which includes putting several bottling units and getting around 600 distributors in place.

IOC is way ahead in executing its Ninth plan, Marwaha said. "We did not execute any bottling units in the Eight plan. This time around, we are executing everything on time. In fact, many units are ahead of schedule, barring one or two plants. IOC is far ahead of other competitors ," he added.

By the end of this year, IOC plans to provide 40 lakh connections in the country. This also includes marketing Indane in 5-kg cylinders in the rural market, which the company has recently introduced.

The corporation has also designed two rural mobile bottling plants -- one each in Allahabad and Tiruchirapalli -- which would directly fill LPG cylinders in about 25 surrounding villages. "The customer can fill his cylinder directly from the mobile vans, instead of getting a refill bottle," Marwaha added.

Also, the company has finalised plans to set up about 116 auto LPG dispensing units by 2003. Under the first phase, IOC will be setting up around eight units, while the remaining ones would be set up in subsequent months.

These units, which are being set up at a cost of about Rs 115 crore, are currently under different stages of construction, Marwaha said.