Ambitious LPG plans at Confidence Petroleum
One of India's largest LPG retailers is planning to get even bigger.
Nitin Khara, chairman of Nagpur-based and BSE-listed Confidence Petroleum, tell us his company is targeting to have as many as 250 stand-alone stations selling LPG as car fuel within the next three years. "At present we have 99 stations," Khara told PETROWATCH by phone from the US where he is travelling on business.
"Our plan is to add 50 more stations to the network in the current year (2017)." Confidence also has 52 LPG bottling facilities across India. "Each of our bottling facilities has a capacity to fill 2200 tonnes per month (26,400 t/y)," adds Khara.
On February 17, Confidence inaugurated an LPG bottling facility at Hubli in Karnataka, its second in the city; last week it also opened a plant at Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu, its third in that city. "By December 31, 2017, we will commission 10 more bottling facilities," adds Khara.
Confidence has nine LPG cylinder manufacturing units across Gujarat, Nagpur, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Uttarakhand, each manufacturing 5m cylinders/year. For state-owned oil marketing companies, it supplies cylinders with 5-kg to 25-kg capacities while for private sector retailers it supplies 15-kg, 17-kg, 21-kg and 33-kg cylinders.
Confidence also manufactures 300,000 CNG cylinders/year in Vizag and wants to build four new manufacturing facilities in the city by December 2017.