|
Touching lives across geographies
Living essentials | Industry
essentials | Farm essentials | New
business
Tata Chemicals broadly operates in three sectors — living
essentials (household products), industry essentials and farm
essentials (crop nutrition and protection) — giving it
a wide and diverse customer base. The core concept behind
its product and services portfolio is to provide inputs for
better living.
The company’s sustainable approach to business has led
it to work towards optimising the use of raw materials, resources
and technology and creating a portfolio of products that find
application across industries and consumers. It has taken
several key steps to develop a high-tech and sustainable product
portfolio by leveraging its business and scientific expertise.
Tata Chemicals has established the TCL Innovation Centre
in Pune with world-class R&D capabilities in the emerging
areas of nanotechnology and biotechnology. TCL's Centre for
Agriculture and Technology at Aligarh provides advice on practices
and solutions related to farming and crop nutrition. The company
has also entered into a joint venture with Temasek Life Sciences
Laboratory in Singapore for the development of better varieties
of seedlings and agronomic practices.
Living essentials
Basic products for daily living,
such as salt, sodium bicarbonate or baking soda products, fresh
produce and water-related products
The company’s foray into household and consumer
necessities started with an idea – using iodised salt to
resolve health issues arising out of iodine deficiency in India.
Tata Chemicals has launched a range of iodised salts in India
and today is considered a business superbrand in Indian industry.
Today, the Consumer Products Business (CPB) comprises branded
iodised edible salt, sodium bicarbonate and water purifiers,
among other offerings. Besides the iconic brand Tata Salt,
the company's products include a new refined salt brand called
I-Shakti; Tata Salt Lite (contains 15 per cent less sodium
than ordinary salts and caters to health-conscious low-sodium
salt users); and Topp Salt, a brand of edible salt created
for export. I Shakti, a cooking soda, is marketed as a leavening
agent.
To leverage its reach with farmers and housewives, TCL started
Khet-Se,
a fresh fruit and vegetable distribution business in India,
in 2007 as a 50:50 joint venture with Total Produce of Ireland.
Total Produce is the third largest fruit and vegetable distribution
company in the world and Europe’s largest fresh produce
provider. The first Khet-Se centre has already opened in Punjab;
the next will come up in Maharashtra. Khet-Se will source
fruits and vegetables for the fruit and vegetable retailer
through its conveniently located wholesale stores.
Safe drinking water is still a pipe dream for the majority
of India’s lower middle class and poor. TCL met this
challenge by launching Tata Swach in December 2009. Tata
Swach is a unique and innovative water purifier that combines
low-cost ingredients such as rice husk ash with nano-technology.
The product provides performance, convenience and, above all,
affordability, and serves a basic human right of millions
of consumers.
Industry
essentials
Products that form essential
inputs to diverse industries across the glass, detergents,
mining and chemical processing sectors
Soda ash, one of TCL’s main products, finds use
in several industries, including the manufacturing of glass,
pulp and paper, detergents and industrial chemicals. TCL’s
customer base includes some of the world’s leading and
most recognisable brands and companies, such as Procter &
Gamble, Church & Dwight, Unilever, Saint Gobain, Pilkington,
Asahi, Owens Illinois, Guardian, PPG, Vale, Xstrata and Pilkington.
Tata Chemicals' journey started as a synthetic soda ash manufacturer
at Mithapur, Gujarat. The salt works spread across 60sqkm
can produce over 2 million tonnes of solar salt, the base
raw material for almost all the 27 basic chemicals that the
company produces. The Mithapur plant is the largest integrated
salt works and inorganic chemicals complex in this part of
the world. It has an installed capacity of 875,000 tpa --
about 34 per cent of the country's capacity -- making it one
of the largest producers of synthetic soda ash in the world.
The company's soda ash capacity took a significant leap in
early 2006 when it completed the acquisition of the UK-based
Brunner Mond Group, one of the world’s leading manufacturer
of associated alkaline products, and added manufacturing plants
in Northwich in the UK and Lake Magadi in Kenya. Lake Magadi
is a major alkaline evaporate deposit in Africa’s Great
Rift Valley.
In early 2008 TCL successfully completed the acquisition
of US-based General Chemical Industrial Products (GCIP), providing
access to some of the world’s largest and most economically
recoverable trona ore deposits that are then converted to
soda ash, and to manufacturing facilities located at Green
River Basin in Wyoming.
Along with soda ash, TCL also produces sodium
bicarbonate, bulk chemicals such as sulphuric acid, phosphoric
acid, sodium
tripoly phosphate (STPP), caustic soda, bromine-based
products, chlorine based products, gypsum and cement.
TCL's cement business grew out of a sustainability and environment
activity; the cement plant at Mithapur was set up to consume
the solid waste generated during the manufacture of soda ash.
By instituting a more efficient filtration process, TCL has
worked towards capturing by-products and effluents of the
soda ash manufacturing process. The thousands of tonnes of
effluent, thus diverted from negatively loading the environment,
have been converted into a usable commodity – cement
– that is used for high quality construction in western
India.
Farm essentials
Farm inputs needed to improve
crop health and productivity, such as fertilisers, pesticides,
specialty nutrients, seeds and agri-services
The crop nutrition and agri-business unit has a presence
across three key agro-nutrients – nitrogen, phosphorus
and potassium. Nitrogenous fertiliser (urea) is manufactured
at Babrala in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh; phosphatic
fertilisers, DAP and complexes are manufactured at Haldia
in West Bengal in eastern India; MOP is imported.
Currently, TCL is a dominant player in the crop nutrition
segment and its subsidiary Rallis India is a leader in the
crop protection industry. Through Rallis, TCL is looking to
enhance value creation as well as access to business synergies
in the crop nutrition and protection sectors, and thus strengthen
its presence in the entire agri-input space.
The company also helps small farmers enhance farm yields
by providing end-to-end solutions through a network of Tata
Kisan Sansars (farmer’s centres) in the Indian states
of Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana, Uttarakhand, West Bengal,
Bihar and Jharkhand. Tata Kisan Sansars are one-stop resource
centres; they stock seeds, pesticides and fertilisers; lease
out farm equipment and implements to farmers who cannot afford
to buy expensive modern machinery; provide agronomy services
like soil testing and mapping and fertiliser testing; arrange
credit and crop insurance, and even provide buyback facilities.
New business
Biofuels | TCL
Innovation Centre | Centre for Agricultre
and Techonology (CAT)
Tata Chemicals is leveraging its expertise in chemicals
and agri-businesses to develop strengths in new sustainable
technologies in the nanotechnology and biotechnology space.
The company is actively working to build a significant presence
in the biofuels sector. Its Innovation Centre is working on
technologies that can mitigate climate change through “green
chemistry” and product offerings that will make a difference.
Biofuels
In 2007, Tata Chemicals decided to enter the biofuels business
in India. A 30KL per day bioethanol facility, using sweet
sorghum as feedstock, is being set up at Nanded, Maharashtra.
Arrangements are being made with farmers in districts in and
around Nanded, for growing sweet sorghum. Trial cultivation
has so far been very successful. The company has also undertaken
field research on Jatropha, a non-edible tree crop for biodiesel
production. The company has set up a research farm in Aurangabad
and has started varietal trials for developing a package of
practice. The company has also set up multi location trials
for Jatropha in Gujarat, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Andhra
Pradesh.
TCL Innovation Centre
Tata Chemicals Innovation Centre was set up with the objective
of developing world-class R&D facility working on more
than 20 projects in the areas of nanotechnology and biotechnology.
It has now moved from being TCL-centric to a having a much
wider base of clients, from the Tata group as well as external
companies.
The team of scientists at the centre is working in the following
areas:
Centre for Agriculture and Techonology
(CAT)
The CAT has been set up in Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh to provide
advice to farmers on farming and crop nutrition practices
and solutions. This centre is staffed with experienced scientists
who are working in various areas of agri-technology. Specific
projects have been undertaken on determining area and crop
specific nutrition products and combinations, soil health
tracking through indexing etc.
The CAT is expected to provide TCL a competitive advantage
in the future and will provide a very strong base for the
growth of the company in its customised fertiliser business,
specialty crop nutrients business and agribusiness.
|
