Mukherjee: Connecting call

Mumbai, Aug. 19: It’s the longest bridge to Bangladesh in years. Phoenix Yule will build a 34-km conveyor belt that will carry limestone from Meghalaya to a Lafarge cement plant in Bangladesh’s Sylhet.

The project, expected to be through by the middle of next year, will usher in and symbolise the growing confidence in trade between India and Bangladesh. The limestone will be exported through an open general licence under the National Bangladesh Revenue Certificate.

“This is the first of its kind in Asia,” says Phoenix Yule managing director T. K. Mukherjee. The man whose firm is the largest Indian exporter of conveyor belts said projects like these shave 50 per cent off transport costs.

The belt will wheel limestone from Meghalaya’s Kurmi deposits to Surma Cement, a 1.2-million tonne plant being set up by Lafarge with Cemento Milnos, in Sylhet.

In Europe, says Mukherjee, countries like Switzerland and Italy are linked this way. Tunnels were drilled through the Alps and conveyor belts laid through them to ferry materials between the two countries.

The site where the conveyor belt lands in India is close to Cherapunji, a rain-soaked rugged tract that weathers the highest precipitation in the world. In Bangladesh, the Sylhet plains almost always face flood fury.

Once this project, being executed by Larsen & Toubro (L&T), is completed, similar projects could come up elsewhere in the country.

The alternative to the project would have been a fleet of dumper trucks or rail wagons, Mukherjee said. But the terrain would have made it difficult and the cost would have made it less efficient for the French cement major.

Mukherjee said steel cord belts to be used in the project would be manufactured at L&T’s Kalyani unit in Bengal and would cost between Rs 16 crore and Rs 18 crore.

Phoenix Yule is a joint venture between Phoenix CBS of Germany and Andrew Yule & Co. Phoenix CBS is one of the largest makers of the conveyor belt systems.