Ceylon Oxygen opens Rs 1.3 bn air separation plant

(L-R) Srikumar Menon – Cluster Head for Sri Lanka, India & Bangladesh, Linde Group, Niran Pieris – Chief Executive Officer, Ceylon Oxygen Limited and Bernd Eulitz – Regional Business Unit Head for South & East Asia, Linde Group

Ceylon Oxygen Limited (COL), a member of The Linde Group, officially inaugurated its new flagship air separation unit (ASU) installed at Sapugaskanda in Colombo. The new state of the art air separation plant, built at an investment value of Rs 1.3 billion (EUR 9.3 million), is capable of producing 62 tons per day (tpd) of gaseous oxygen, nitrogen and argon for the merchant gases market.

Ceylon Oxygen’s Chief Executive Niran Pieris said, “Our new air separation plant in Colombo is COL’s second and largest air separation plant in Sri Lanka and further reinforces COL’s position as the leading industrial and medical gases player in the country.

This new plant also represents a milestone in the industrial gases market as it will produce argon and indeed it will make Sri Lanka fully self-sufficient in argon.

The plant is also very energy efficient, allowing us to lower our energy input costs and also pass on the savings to our customers.” Bernd Eulitz, Regional Managing Director responsible for Linde's gases business in South & East Asia, said, “Our new ASU will significantly increase our production capacity and enhance our product and service offerings to our existing and potential new customers in the hospital, ship-building and ship-repair, steel, glass, food and chemicals sectors.

We remain committed to investing in our business in Sri Lanka to ensure we are well positioned to support the growth of our valued customers in the medium to longer term.”