Reliance Industries (RIL) will tie up with Russia’s SIBUR to set up a butyl rubber manufacturing plant in Gujarat.
The necessary agreement will be signed during Russian President, Vladimir Putin’s visit to India, which begins on Wednesday. RIL’s oil refinery will supply the raw materials for production, and SIBUR, the technology.
Presently, Reliance Industries has a poly butadiene rubber (PBR) plant in Vadodara which produces around 80,000 tonne per annum. Also, the company is in the final stages of commissioning another 40,000 tonne per annum plant in Gujarat.
The PBR demand in India is around 1,60,000 tonne per annum, of which half is met indigenously and the remaining is imported. In the country, the demand for this kind of rubber is projected to grow 6.4 per cent annually.
India is the world’s fourth largest consumer of elastomers (a type of polymer) after China, the US and Japan.