Reliance ramps up daily medical-grade oxygen production to 1,000 tonnes

Billionaire Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries Ltd has ramped up production of medical oxygen to 1,000 tonnes per day, making it India's largest producer of medical-grade liquid oxygen from a single location.

Reliance ramped up production from near-zero to 1,000 tonnes per day and now produces over 11 per cent of India's total production of medical-grade liquid oxygen - meeting the needs of nearly every one in ten patients, a company said in a statement.

Ambani is personally supervising the scale-up of production and transportation at Jamnagar in Gujarat.

In April, the firm supplied over 15,000 tonnes of medical-grade liquid oxygen free of cost. It airlifted 24 ISO containers for transporting oxygen from Saudi Arabia, Germany, Belgium, The Netherlands and Thailand - creating an additional 500 tonnes of transportation capacity for India.

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Private firms are supplementing efforts to augment oxygen supplies as the country battles its worst health crisis. India posted a record daily rise of 4,01,993 new coronavirus cases after 10 consecutive days of over 3 lakh infections. Deaths from Covid-19 jumped by 3,523 over the past 24 hours, taking the total toll in India to 2,11,853.

"As India grapples with an unprecedented new wave of the Covid pandemic, Reliance has risen to the occasion by making an all-out effort to save precious lives," the statement said.

A critical need of the hour is assured availability of medical-grade liquid oxygen for the treatment of severely ill patients across the country.

"Traditionally, Reliance is not a manufacturer of medical-grade liquid oxygen. Yet, starting from nil before the pandemic, Reliance has now become India's largest producer of this life-saving resource from a single location.

"At its refinery-cum-petrochemical complex in Jamnagar and other facilities, Reliance now produces over 1,000 tonnes of medical-grade liquid oxygen per day — or over 11 per cent of India's total production – meeting the needs of nearly every one in ten patients," it said.

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Under the personal supervision of Ambani, Reliance has adopted a two-pronged approach to strengthen the availability of medical oxygen in India - refocusing several industrial processes at Jamnagar and other facilities for rapid scale-up in production of medical-grade liquid oxygen, and augmenting loading and transportation capacities to ensure its swift and safe supply to the states and Union territories.

The firm's oil refineries and petrochemical plants produce industrial oxygen as part of processes. This was scrubbed to produce high-purity medical-grade oxygen.

Also, it converted nitrogen tankers into transport trucks to move medical-grade oxygen.

Commenting on these initiatives, Mukesh Ambani, Chairman and Managing Director, Reliance Industries Limited, said: "For me and all of us at Reliance, nothing is more important than saving every life as India battles against a new wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. There is an immediate need to maximise India's production and transportation capacities for medical grade oxygen."