Severe oxygen shortage in India created countless business opportunities

16

Nov

PRAKSHI RAWAT

Capital enterprise in the PSA oxygen plant was supported by the state. However, as the number of incidents of Covid-19 declines, there are no buyers for the oxygen produced in such units.

Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray opened up a new industrial unit at a sugar industry in Osmanabad district as a violent second wave of Covid-19 began to fade in Maharashtra.

It's not just any plant. An oxygen production plant was an iron and steel structure with large cylinders nested within it. This is the first of its kind in the state, and it used pressure swing adsorption technology to create oxygen from atmospheric air while screening out all other gases.

The PSA technique, which had been hardly employed in India until then, came into sharp focus in the second wave, when India's daily medical oxygen consumption increased from 700 mt before the pandemic to nearly 9,000mt. Many patients were killed, even in hospitals, as the government struggled to transport liquid oxygen plants across vast distances.

Faced with criticism for failure to boost oxygen capacity, the Centre has accelerated the installation of PSA plants in hospitals that were less expensive and faster to establish than large-scale liquid medical oxygen units. State governments, for their part, established initiatives to boost capital enterprise in them.

Entrepreneurs began to warm it up to PSA plants as a business possibility after seeing the windfall earnings that so many oxygen plant suppliers experienced during the second wave. Some saw that as a chance to give back to the community. PSA plants began growing outside of hospitals in Maharashtra, at locations such as sugar factories.

The fact that the chief minister personally officially launched the PSA plant at the Dharashiv factory site in Osmanabad added to the impression that the company was supported by the state.

However, the Dharashiv facility has remained inactive for the past five months. With it, private industry's initial interest in developing oxygen plants is dwindling. Some participants in the business are concerned about losses they may suffer. A boom appeared to have burst in Maharashtra's sugar belt.