Asansol Refractory Industries (West Bengal)

Introduction

The Asansol-Burnpur area is rich in mineral resources such as coal, limestone, fireclay, china clay, granite, stone and sand. There are hence a large number of industries located in this region. Among them is a century-old cluster of refractory units around Asansol town. There are about 206 refractory units in the cluster, of which about 200 units use downdraft (DD) kilns; five units use tunnel kilns, and one unit is equipped with a chamber kiln. The refractory products are used within the country. The primary domestic market includes large steel manufacturing industries in within 200 kilometres of Asansol such as TISCO (Digwadih), TELCO (Jamshedpur), IISCO (Jamadoba), Bokaro Steel, SAIL (Durgapur), and Alloy Steel Plant (Durgapur). A small quantity of the products is also exported to neighbouring countries.

Number of MSMEs

206

Energy consumption

Medium

Main fuels

Coal, petcoke, electricity, diesel

Production & turnover

120,600 tpa

Total energy consumption (toe)

25,063

Leading industry association(s)

• Refractory Manufacturers Association, West Bengal

Energy efficiency initiatives

TERI-SDC Partnership: Scaling up Energy Efficient Technologies in Small Enterprises (EESE)
http://www.sameeeksha.org/index.php?option=com_projects&task=level&title=EESE&id=41

Cluster profile

http://sameeeksha.org/pdf/clusterprofile/Asansol-Refractory-Industries-West Bengal.pdf

Other resources

• Indian Refractory Makers Association http://www.irmaindia.org/
• MSME Development Institute (MSME-DI), Durgapur