9th July, 2003
Ministry of Chemicals & Fertilizers  


NEED TO UPGRADE QUALITY IN SPECIALITY CHEMICALS SECTOR EMPHASISED

CONFERENCE ON SPECIALITY CHEMICALS INAUGURATED


Shri Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa, Minister of Chemicals and Fertilizers has urged the Indian Industry to upgrade the manufacturing facilities and adopt globally acceptable standards including ISO 9000 and 14000 series along with adoption of the Responsible Care as a practice in the Speciality Chemicals Sector to become global players. He said that there was a need to focus on contract manufacturing to establish our strength in quality products especially as the costs of registering new products and penetrating new markets is very time consuming and involves high expenditure.

Inaugurating a conference on "Speciality Chemicals : Competitiveness in the New Millennium" here today, Shri Dhindsa said that the sector needs to focus on imparting special characteristics to the products of the customer industries such as safety from corrosion, providing gloss and feel to textiles and leather. He said R&D to develop innovative products as well as process to prolong the life of existing molecules through better formulations is the need of the hour. The industry has to tap its full potential to achieve it’s target of doubling India’s share of global production by the year 2005, he said.

Shri Dhindsa said that India has become a major global player in this sector with volume of the Indian market in the chemical sector being approximately 30 billion US Dollars of which about 4 billion US dollar is of Speciality Chemicals. The market share of the Speciality Chemicals sector constitutes nearly 13 per cent of the Indian Chemical industry. The Indian Fine Chemical and Performance Chemical industry, components of Speciality Chemicals, are on a growth path and are currently estimated at 700 million US Dollars and 3 billion US Dollars respectively, he added.

 
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