Blanket ban on oxygen supply to industries stops production of much-required oxygen cylinders

The blanket ban on the supply of oxygen to industries is unwittingly hampering medical oxygen logistics in the country as it has impacted the production of cylinders used to store and ferry the life-saving gas.

Two of the largest manufacturers of compressed medical oxygen cylinders, Everest Kanto Cylinder and Rama Cylinders have stopped production for the past several days due to a shortage of oxygen while other leading players like Euro India Cylinders and Lizer Cylinders are facing similar issues, industry insiders told ET.

The companies need about two tonnes of liquid oxygen a day for cylinder manufacturing as the process requires the metal to be heated to high temperature.

“We are requesting everybody in the government to allocate a consistent supply of oxygen to enable us to run the factory and manufacture the cylinders which are direly needed in the country,” said an executive at Everest Kanto.

The government had prohibited the supply of oxygen for industrial use from April 22 and ordered oxygen producers to divert all supplies for medical usage as hospitals across states faced a severe shortage of the life-saving gas amid a rapid spike in Covid-19 cases.

Over 90% of the cylinder production in the country is concentrated around Gandhidham in Gujarat.

Vashu Ramsinghani, managing director of Rama Cylinders, said the company got permission from the Prime Minister’s Office on April 27 to resume manufacturing and get the required liquid oxygen. However, the Gujarat government is yet to allocate supplies to them.

“The cylinder makers located in Gandhidham are capable of satisfying India’s total cylinder needs,” Ramsinghani said. “At Rama Cylinders, we have the raw material, the manpower and the machinery with us, but the only problem is we need a small quantity of liquid oxygen.”

Compressed medical oxygen cylinders are important because thousands of hospitals across the country rely on these cylinders to meet their oxygen requirements as not every hospital has large cryogenic tanks to store liquid oxygen.

And there is an acute paucity of cylinders in the country.

“People who are home quarantined or people who are buying oxygen in retail are all hoarding cylinders,” said RS Sachdeva, managing director of Hi-Tech Industrial Gases, an oxygen producer. “I understand there is a genuine reason, but the industry works on a cycle. That's why there is a shortage along with rising cases and demand.”

The authorities face the hard choice of whether to allocate oxygen for manufacturing more cylinders or to rush all the available gas to hospitals sending out SOS signals as their supplies dry up.

There is a similar shortage of large cryogenic containers that can ferry oxygen in a liquid state, people in the know said.

The issue comes at a time when oxygen production in the country is in excess of the medical demand, but its transportation remains a bottleneck.

“Manufacturing oxygen is the easiest, but delivering it is the issue,” said Siddharth Jain, director at Inox Air Products, India’s second-largest independent oxygen manufacturer. “The problem lies with the supply chain.”

The central government had last week sped up the clearance process for the import of oxygen cylinders and 16 other medical devices amid a shortage in the country.