HURL’s Gorakhpur, Barauni, Sindri urea plants to be commissioned by 2021-end

New Delhi: Union Minister of Chemicals and Fertilisers DV Sadananda Gowda reviewed the progress of three upcoming projects of Hindustan Urvarak & Rasayan Limited (HURL), a Miniratna PSU under the Ministry of Chemicals & Fertilizers, at Gorakhpur, Barauni and Sindri via video conferencing on Tuesday.

During the review meeting, HURL's Managing Director (MD) Arun Kumar Gupta gave a brief presentation on the progress of all the three projects. He said that Gorakhpur, Sindri and Barurani projects had achieved 80 percent, 74 percent and 73 percent progress, respectively, so far. However, the projects have been affected due to lockdown, travel restrictions, unavailability of labourers and so on. The situation has now improved and sufficient workforce, although lesser by 20 percent than pre-COVID-19 level, have been mobilised to resume the work at all the three sites.  Although there could be a delay in the commissioning by five to six months from the scheduled deadline, he assured that all the three projects would be commissioned by the end of the next year.

Gowda said that an aggressive catch-up plan must be prepared to compensate for the delay emanating from challenges due to Covid-19.

He suggested that video conferencing may be used to connect with consultants from foreign countries as travel restriction is expected to continue for some time. He appreciated efforts of the management of HURL for the resumption of work at their sites. Once the three projects are commissioned by the end of the next year, domestic capacity would increase by 38.1 lakh MT, which would increase self-reliance (Aatmanirbharta) in urea production. The commissioning of these projects will bring benefits to the nation in terms of reduced import dependency, saving of foreign exchange, generation of hundreds of direct and indirect jobs, tax receipts for government etc.

Hindustan Urvarak & Rasayan Limited (HURL)

Hindustan Urvarak & Rasayan Limited (HURL) was incorporated on June 15, 2015, as a joint venture company by Coal India Limited (CIL), NTPC Limited (NTPC) and Indian Oil Corporation Limited (IOCL) as the lead promoters with Fertilizer Corporation of India Limited (FCIL) and Hindustan Fertilizer Corporation Limited (HFCL) as the other two partners. Through HURL, the government is reviving three closed urea plants of FCIL and HFCL at Gorakhpur, Sindri and Barauni, each having an annual capacity of 12.7 Lakh MT.

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