On September 22, Air Water received an order for the supply of on-site gas to the Durgapur Works from SAIL which is a government-run steelmaker located in West Bengal of east India, and is planning to construct a cryogenic air-separation plant having an output capacity of 1250 tons per day. It is Air Water’s third on-site plant in India following those of Tata Steel (Jamshedpur) and JSW (Ballary).

As the precedent two plants had been transferred following the merger of Linde-Praxair, Air Water obtained not only their ASU but also other assets. This time Air Water makes the on-site supply with its own plant for the first time.

Based on the results of the previous two cases, Air Water has negotiated with SAIL ever since two years ago. Regarding the reason of the successful award at this time for the on-site agreement in India using AWI’s own plant, Ryosuke Matsubayashi president commented said, “We greatly owe to the establishment of our system which to enables designing, construction and engineering in use of our own ASU at each business base in the U.S. and India as well as Japan.” He emphasizes the success in the system which has been fostered in the gas business based on the global and the enlarged ASU equipment.

In Durgapur Works there used to be an ASU for its self- consumption of gas, but it will be destructed in line with the operation of new plant of Air Water.

The capacity of new plant will be 1,250t/d (36,500 Nm3/h) on oxygen base which is larger than the old plant including the expanded portion of the steel work.

The plant will produce and supply by pipeline oxygen, nitrogen and argon to the steel work, and liquefy partly for delivery by tank truck to the neighboring area. The investment amounts to 13.5 billion yen. The construction is planned to start at the end of September of this year and operation is scheduled to start in October 2025.

For reference, In India Air Water is investing actively to make business bases in India. As already reported, in Chennai of southern India the company is constructing a liquefaction plant (5,100Nm3/h for oxygen, 1,600Nm3 for nitrogen and 200Nm3/h for argon) aiming to start operation from October 2024.

The plant is planned to use one third of electricity from renewable energy and has invested to a local solar power generating company.

Furthermore, the company is also constructing a cylinder filling plant (for operation to start March 2024) in Faridabad in the norther area.