Petronet to invest ₹40,000 cr in 5 years
The Hindu
India's biggest gas importer, Petronet, looking to foray into petrochemicals business
Petronet LNG Ltd, India's biggest gas importer, will invest ₹40,000 crore in the next five years for expanding import infrastructure as well as foraying into new business to boost profitability to ₹10,000 crore.
Petronet, which operates two liquefied natural gas (LNG) import facilities at Dahej in Gujarat and Kochi in Kerala, is looking to foray into the petrochemicals business, according to the firm's latest annual report.
The company has formulated a '1-5-10-40' strategy for exponential growth and diversification. "The company aims at achieving an annual turnover of ₹1 lakh crore over next five years and annual profit after tax of ₹10,000 crore with investments of ₹40,000 crore," it said.
It had a net profit or profit after tax of ₹3,352 crore on a turnover of ₹43,169 crore in fiscal 2021-22 (April 2021 to March 2022).
LNG is natural gas that has been cooled down to liquid form for ease of transporting in ships. At the import terminal, LNG is regassified into its gaseous state before piping it to users like power plants for production of electricity and fertiliser units for making urea and other crop nutrients.
Petronet said it is raising import capacity of the Dahej terminal from 17.5 million tonnes per annum to 22.5 million tonnes at an estimated cost of ₹600 crore.
Also, it is adding two more LNG storage tanks to the present six tanks at Dahej at a cost of ₹1,250 crore.
According to the company, the technology, protected by multiple international patents, facilitates the creation of a plastic-to-plastic circular economy, where commonly used plastics such as polyolefin packaging no longer need to be down-cycled, incinerated or landfilled at the end of their life. Instead, they can be continuously recycled in a closed-loop, without any loss of quality.