Linde Group to invest euro1 billion in BOC

Sanjiv Lamba, managing director, South & East Asia, Linde Gas Asia Pte., said, "India is one of the priority countries for Linde."

He was speaking on the sidelines of the company's annual general meeting.

A major part of the proposed investment would be for the steel sector. Currently, steel sector accounts for 50 per cent of BOC's operations and in the future it was expected to be at the same level.

However, new applications like photovoltaic could also assume significance.

BOC has won the five-year contract for supply of electronic gases to Moser Baer.

The contract covers designing, installation, operation and maintenance of an electronic gases supply system and supply of speciality gases to them.

The electronic gases would be imported but BOC is contemplating setting up plants in India.

S K Menon, finance director, BOC India, said, over the next couple of years, BOC could set up plants in India but it would have to be supported by petrochemical industry since the raw material was from downstream petrochemicals.

Opportunities in growth could also arise in the area of food processing. Lamba said, the progress in the food and cold chains in the country was slow, but was expected to pick up.

Earlier,  responding to the shareholders, S M Datta, chairman, BOC India said, there was pricing pressure in the wake of competition.

He said, the gases industry was capital intensive in nature because of the need for significant investments in new capacities and distribution resources.

"Despite the capital intensive nature of the industrial gases business, almost all the global gas companies have continued to compete with each other in their pursuit of winning large supply scheme opportunities that emerged mainly in core sectors such as steel, petrochemicals, refineries etc.," said Datta.