At 200 TPD of liquid gases, the Hosur plant will be identical to the existing Sriperumbudur plant in terms of production quantity and will begin operations in December 2022.
At ₹150 crore (or £14.5m), Inox Air Products intend to reaffirm its leadership position in the state of Tamil Nadu, continuing to produce large quantities of liquid oxygen, liquid nitrogen, and liquid argon.
The commissioning of the Hosur plant is set to augment the company’s liquid medical oxygen (LMO) production capacity by 50%.
With liquid oxygen in high demand at the moment due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, this increase in production capacity could be an important step in the region’s capability to deal with future oxygen shortages.
The INOX Sriperumbudur plant produced and supplied a daily average of 180 TPD of medical oxygen in the months of April and May 2021, supplying to 122 hospitals across the region.
A decrease of 175 TPD to 150 TPD in the LMO demand of hospitals indicates that the medical oxygen consumption in hospitals has gradually reduced and should decrease further.
Siddarth Jain, director, INOX Air Products, said, “We believe that increasing the medical oxygen storage capacity across the country holds the key in dealing with similar surge in demand in the future as well.”
“Considering that at a national level, there is ample production capacity, governments must work towards strengthening the supply chain and storage. The hospitals should augment their LMO storage capacity to be prepared for the potential third wave.”
One of the key challenges during the second wave of the pandemic came in the form of limited storage infrastructure. With the increased number of Covid-19 cases, every hospital increased the number of beds and ventilators, while the infrastructure to handle medical oxygen remained limited.