Petcoke supply at IndianOil’s Paradip refinery in Odisha commenced from Dec’15 after commissioning of DCU (Delayed Coker Unit), which was having road dispatch facility only. Later on, the rake loading facility was commissioned in Nov’18, which has led to shift the dispatch more by rake rather than road.
The customers were facing several issues like very high road transportation rates and other unfavorable circumstances due to local unions. After commissioning of rake loading facilities, the dependency on road movement gradually came down. This has also indirectly taken care of various issues to a great extent which were being faced by consumers from local transport union. The rake dispatches attracted long distant consumers, due to much lower freight as compared to road transportation charges.
In last four fiscal years, FY 2017-18 till FY 2020-21, the mode of pet coke dispatch has completely changed. Considering an annual average sales of 1,200 kilotons (kt) per year during FY18, FY19 and FY20 and reduced sales in FY21 as 718 kt (from Apr’20-Dec’20), the % share of dispatch is shown below, with average rake quantity as 3.5 kt.
The share of rake supply has increased from nil to 90% in last four years. Further, during FY21 it has sharply increased due to the crisis situation where the rake dispatch has been preferred by major customers over road dispatches.
Notably, an all-time highest number of 36 rakes of pet coke were dispatched in in the month of Dec’20. Pet coke dispatches by rake has been consistently higher in most of the months during the current fiscal as compared to last year except in Aug’20. This was due to shut down of DCU from which pet coke is produced.
On an average the number of rakes supplied in FY21 is 20.6 per month as compared to 14.4 rakes per month in FY20. This reflects a growth of 40% in average number of rakes dispatched. The number of rakes has more than doubled from 17 in Dec’19 to 36 in Dec’20.
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