Construction Of New Factory Of Pusri 60 Pct Completed

Palembang, S Sumatra, Sept 8 (Antara) - Construction of a new fertilizer factory of PT Pupuk Sriwidjaja (Pusri) in this South Sumatra capital has been 60 percent completed . Construction of the new production facility to replace an old factory under the revitalization program of the state owned fertilizer producer began in mid 2013. The process of construction of the Pusri II B unit had been progressing as scheduled until September 2014. "We are optimistic that work would be completed and it would be operational in November, 2015," chief spokesman of PT Pusri Sulfa Ghanie, said here on Monday. The various sets of equipment of the factory have been imported from Germany, India, South Korea and Japan, Sulfa said. He said currently PT Pusri has four factories with a total production capacity of 2.262 million tons of urea and ammonia per year. The company, however, could not operate at full capacity as the factories have been too old. The four factories have been more than 35 years in age on the average much older than an age of 20 years considered ideal. The youngest in age is Pusri I B which came on line in 1994. Revitalization, therefore has been launched by replacing the oldest facility , Pusri II, which came on stream in 1974. Revitalization is needed to improve the productivity of the company. The new factory is built by a consortium of state owned construction company PT Rekayasa Industri and Toyo Engineering Corporation . Construction of the new factory is estimated to cost Rp7.4 trillion using the KBR Purifier Technology for the ammonia plant and Aces 21 technology of Toyo for the urea plant. The installed production capacity for the ammonia plant is 2,000 tons per day or 660,000 tons per year and the capacity of the urea plant is 2,750 tons per day or 907,500 tons per year. The new technology of Pusri II B , apart from being environmentally friendly is also efficient in the use of gas as the basic material with a ratio of 31.49 MMBTU per ton of ammonia and 21.18 MMBTU per ton of urea. If the process of revitalization is carried out as scheduled, the new factory would start operation in late 2015 and the company could increase its production to 2.61 million tons of urea per year, Sulfa said.