Eastward ho!

Calcutta, Dec. 28: Royal Dutch Shell, the world’s third largest company, has set foot in Bengal.

The company has set up a bitumen plant at the Uluberia Industrial Estate, its first such unit in the country.

The unit with a capacity of 50,000 tonnes per annum went on stream last week.

Shell said starting with Bengal, the company plans to set up six to seven such plants in the medium term.

“The market opportunity in the eastern region is the best. So, we have set up the first plant here,” a Shell India spokesperson said.

Shell is the largest international investor in India’s energy sector with investments of $1 billion.

It operates one of the two LNG terminals in the country, at Hazira, Gujarat. The investment in the Bengal plant is small compared with the exposure at Hazira.

This unit will cater to the infrastructure market of the eastern region, especially Bengal.

The plant will produce a range of products such as emulsion, crumb, rubber modified emulsion and polymer modified emulsion.

The company has tied up with a public sector oil marketing company for the supply of raw materials.

Estimated at 3.5 million tonnes annually, the bitumen market is poised to grow exponentially as the government continues to pump funds into road development.

“Shell had entered the Indian market in bitumen with twin objectives: to leverage over 80 years of experience across the world in building safe, high quality roads to the benefit of India, and thereby, to build a long-standing profitable business in the country,” Vikram Singh Mehta, chairman of the Shell group of companies, said in a statement.

Shell is one of the world’s biggest and most advanced providers of polymer modified bitumen and bitumen emulsion.

One of Shell’s strengths is to produce bitumen of different colours that is useful in marking out highways into fast and slow lanes.

The development augurs well for the state which is trying to develop, expand and modernise road infrastructure to meet the demands of industry that has benefited from the investor-friendly policies of the state government.

Shell setting up its first bitumen unit in the country in Bengal will also have a positive impact on the state’s image, industry observers said.