NEW DELHI | MUMBAI Detergent prices look set to rise as the government is planning to impose additional duties on the import of soda ash, a key input in its production. Provisional anti-dumping duties ranging from $11.55 per tonne to $38.38 per tonne will be imposed on imports from the EU, China, Iran and Ukraine, as per a ruling of the Directorate General of Anti-Dumping & Allied Duties that works under the commerce department. “The government has enough evidence of injury to domestic producers due to dumping of soda ash by certain countries and has decided to impose provisional duties. These will be replaced by final duties once the investigation is completed,” a commerce department official told ET. Anti-dumping duties are levied when an exporter ships a product at prices lower than those prevailing at home and in turn causes disruption in the destination country. The anti-dumping duties recommended by the commerce department will be imposed once the finance ministry notifies i...

BANGALORE: Belying India’s slowing economy and ongoing policy paralysis, the Karnataka state government pulled out all stops to project the southern state as the best investment destination in the country, at the second edition of its Global Investors Meet that began in Bangalore on Thursday. The government has signed investment agreements worth Rs 1.6 lakh crore, as opposed to its stated target of Rs 6 lakh crore. At the 2010 event, the state government had signed agreements of about Rs 3.92 lakh crore worth of investment proposals from 389 global and Indian companies. Speaking at the sidelines of the biannual event, Murugesh Nirani, state minister for large and medium-sized industries said that the government hopes to attract investments of over $100 billion (Rs 5,51,700 crore) at the meet, surpassing the $70 billion (Rs 3,86,190 crore) worth of Memorandum of Understandings signed in 2010. However, the BJP-led government’s lack of progress in implementing a sizable number of MoUs ...

Gujarat Alkalies and Chemicals has commenced commercial production of Stable Bleaching Powder (SBP) Plant at Dahej. The total cost of the project is Rs. 25.50 crores and the estimated increase in annual revenue of the company from this plant would be about Rs. 15 crores. The company is having existing SBP Plant at Dahej with a capacity of 15,000 Tonnes Per Annum (TPA). With this expansion, the total capacity of the SBP Plant at Dahej will be 30,000 TPA. The SBP Plant is captively consuming Chlorine. GACL is one of the largest producers of Caustic Soda in India, with a production capacity of 1,087 TPD. Thecompany is accredited with ISO 9001:2015, ISO 14001:2015, BS OHSAS 18001:2007, ISO 50001:2011.

Tokuyama Corp. and Panasonic Corp. announced that they have started demonstration work on pure hydrogen fuel cell generators that use byproduct hydrogen generated in Tokuyama’s Tokuyama Factory in Shunan City, Yamaguchi Prefecture. The demonstration period is scheduled to end in March 2023. Byproduct hydrogen is derived from the manufacturing process of caustic soda. With the acceleration of worldwide efforts to achieve the decarbonization of society, interest in hydrogen as a next-generation source of energy has been growing. The effective utilization of by-product hydrogen is of great importance from the perspectives of not only global warming prevention and energy security, but also the chemical industry’s contribution to society through the effective use of secondary products. For this demonstration, equipment was installed in the Tokuyama Factory. The equipment was configured into a system incorporating six pure hydrogen fuel cell generators, developed by P...