Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel, Union shipping minister Sarbananda Sonowal and Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma laid the foundation stone on Saturday for a Rs 2,300 crore e-methanol plant at Deendayal Port in Kandla. The port authority calls it India’s first port-based plant of its kind. It will make 150 tonnes of synthetic methanol a day for ships, ANI reported.
What the plant will make, and from what
E-methanol is a liquid fuel built from hydrogen and carbon dioxide. Producers split water into hydrogen with electricity, then combine that hydrogen with captured CO2. When the electricity comes from solar or wind and the carbon comes from biological sources, the fuel counts as low-carbon over its life cycle. According to IANS, via Punjab Kesari English, the Kandla plant will run on renewable power, water and biogenic carbon dioxide.
Deendayal Port Authority (DPA) and Assam Petro-Chemicals Ltd (APCL), a state company based at Namrup in Dibrugarh district, will build it together. DPA holds 76% of the capital and APCL 24%. India Today NE reported that the port’s share includes Rs 567.32 crore in equity, 75 acres of land, desalinated water and green hydrogen. APCL has made conventional methanol from natural gas at Namrup for decades, so it brings the process experience.
The partners signed their first agreement in Dibrugarh on 30 January this year. That memorandum covered 50 tonnes a day and about Rs 1,200 crore, Maritime Gateway reported at the time. The project has since tripled in planned size.
The timeline to watch
- Phase 1: 50 tonnes a day, Rs 1,200 crore, target completion January 2027.
- Phase 2: another 100 tonnes a day, Rs 1,100 crore, target March 2027.
Those dates sit four and six months after the stone-laying. Chemical plants of this size tend to take longer to build and commission, so readers should treat the targets as official ambitions until construction shows visible progress. Both IANS and India Today NE also carried a projected production cost of about $750 a tonne, against a global price of around $1,300 for e-methanol. Neither outlet explained how the partners arrived at that figure, and it depends on what the plant pays for renewable electricity.
Why Kutch, and what it means locally
Shipping lines have started ordering vessels that can burn methanol, and those ships need somewhere to refuel. Kandla sits at the western end of India’s coastline, close to the routes that link Asian ports with Europe. Sonowal described it as a future green-fuel stop on the Singapore to Rotterdam route. The Centre has named DPA as one of its green hydrogen hubs under the National Green Hydrogen Mission, and the port says it wants to become a bunkering point for low-carbon fuels.
Kutch also has what the process consumes. Large solar and wind parks operate in the district, and the Khavda renewable park is being built on the edge of the Rann. DPA has committed desalinated water to the project, which matters in a district that ended this monsoon short of rain.
The partners expect more than 3,500 direct and indirect jobs, across construction, engineering services and transport. Gandhidham and Anjar, the towns closest to the port, would feel most of that demand for housing and services. Local contractors and technical institutes in the district have an opening here if the phases run on schedule.
What comes next
At 150 tonnes a day, the plant would make roughly 55,000 tonnes a year at full output. That is a pilot-to-early-commercial volume by global standards, and a single large methanol-fuelled container ship can burn thousands of tonnes in a year. The more useful test for Kandla is whether it signs fuel-supply deals with shipping lines, and whether DPA’s green hydrogen supply arrives in time for Phase 1. Watch for tender awards and an environmental clearance filing, which should appear in the coming months if the January target holds.
Sources: ANI (via LatestLY), IANS (via Punjab Kesari English), India Today NE, Maritime Gateway
This report was compiled and written with AI assistance from publicly reported sources, and reviewed for accuracy.