Indian company in UAE halts making CNG cylinders to prepare oxygen containers for India: Report

An Indian company’s subsidiary in the UAE has put on hold producing CNG cylinders and started manufacturing oxygen containers for India which is battling an unprecedented second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Pushkar Khurana, managing director of the UAE-based free zone company EKC International FZE, said that the task at hand is a duty towards his nation, the Gulf News reported.

In March and April, the company -- a subsidiary of Everest Kanto Cylinder Limited in India -- shipped about 6,000 oxygen cylinders and in May the number is likely to go up to 7,000.

“We are an Indian subsidiary and as soon as we came to know about the oxygen cylinder shortage in India, we had to rise to the call of our nation and serve the needs of our country,” he said.

Khurana said that since March, they have been exporting these cylinders in multiple containers to Port Mundra in Gujarat.

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“We make the cylinders which are then filled with medical oxygen by Gulf-based industrial gas companies such as Emirates Industrial Gases Company (EIGC) and Gulf Cryo, and these are shipped to Port Mundra. Each container that is shipped contains about 350 cylinders of 50 litre capacity.

“We look at this as a critical or emergency duty and will continue to produce oxygen cylinders for as long as India needs them. The Adani Group from Gujarat reached out to us and we immediately adapted the production to manufacturing oxygen cylinders which have a slightly different specification than CNG cylinders,” Khurana said.

India is struggling with an unprecedented second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic with more than 3,00,000 daily new coronavirus cases being reported for over a week.

Hospitals in several states are reeling under a shortage of medical oxygen and beds.