NCS Group to set up bio-diesel plant at Kakinada

The Narayanam Chalamaiah and Sons (NCS) Group is planning to set up a bio-diesel plant at Kakinada. Crude palm oil will be the chief raw material for the proposed plant. The company is in talks with three to four foreign firms for setting up of the plant.

"We have abundant resources to set up a bio-diesel plant. We can find as much as 200-300 tonne of crude palm oil a day for the proposed bio-diesel plant. The estimated cost of the project is around Rs 50 crore and negotiations are on with foreign companies in this regard,'' said N Murali, director of NCS Storage Systems.

All the required facilities for production of bio-diesel are available except a processing plant, he said and added that the proposed plant would be totally export-oriented based on the buyback system.

NCS Storage Systems located at Kakinada provides palm oil storage facilities for 12 oil companies. The group has established storage terminals at various ports in the country to store and handle classified liquid cargo. It established its first bulk liquid storage terminal with a direct pipeline connection to jetty at the Kakinada Deep Water Port in 1997. Subsequently, it constructed two more bulk liquid storage terminals here and expanded the capacity to 10 lakh kilo litres (KLs) to store different liquid cargos, both edible and classified petroleum categories that include HSD, motor spirit, naphtha, sulphuric acid, methanol, SKO, etc.

Its storage capacity is the highest in the south. Currently, the group handles around 6 lakh kl of edible oils and 4 lakh kl of petroleum products per annum at its storage terminals that are directly connected by a 10-km length of pipleline to the Kakinada Deep Water Port. The group also has storage terminals at kochi and Karvar seaports.

Its palm oil refinery here refines 400 metric tonne a day. The group imports crude palm oil from Malaysia and Indonesia and sells refined oil within Andhra Pradesh.

The company also has an alcohol distillery unit at Chinabrahmadevam village in Peddapuram mandal of East Godavari district where it makes alcohol from sugarcane molasses.

Talking about the group's other plans, Murali said a 20-Mw coal-based power plant would be commissioned at its sugar factory at Lachaiahpet of Bobbili in Vizianagaram district in December. The group would utilise 6 MW of power to run the sugar plant and supply the remaining 14 MW to other factories during the cane crushing season, he said.

According to Murali, the crushing capacity of the factory was expanded to 6000 mt per day after it was taken over from the government. Its original capacity was 3,000 mt per day.

While the maximum crushing capacity registered was 1,80,000 mt per season before it was taken over by the group, the capacity increased year after year and reached 7lakh mt per season, claimed Murali.