Monday, June 02, 2008 Gas firm to pour P1B into facility By Nancy R. Cudis Sun.Star Staff Reporter
RECOGNIZING the growth of the shipping industry, health care services, and the electronic and industrial sector in Balamban, Cebu, the Southern Industrial Gases (SIG) Philippines Inc. will put up a P1-billion air separation unit (ASU) in its existing plant in Barangay Buanoy, Balamban.
“This is the testimony of the company to growth in these industries. We want to (offer) our services and provide innovative solutions to our customers. With the growth in these industries, we also have to meet their growing requirements. We have to expand, as well,” said SIG product and business development officer Ralf Sabornido.
The planned ASU will be the first of its kind for SIG. It will be built by SIG’s affiliate, Munich, Germany-based gases and engineering company, the Linde Group.
Lorenzo Villamor, SIG operations manager, said the company is planning to hold the groundbreaking ceremony for the new facility in July this year.
The ASU is expected to be operational in the first quarter of 2010.
Unlike its existing plants that produce gases, the ASU will produce liquid gases.
“(The ASU) will be able to generate a combined capacity of 65 tons per day. It will produce oxygen for medical and industrial customers, argon for fabrication, and nitrogen for the electronics industry,” Sabornido said.
The ASU will also bring about reliable, quick and efficient supply to customers.
“This will also be a cost-saving (move) of the company. We can also help customers save by giving them discounts, since the production cost would be lesser. Since the volume produced is big, the production cost will come out cheaper,” Sabornido and Villamor explained to Sun.Star Cebu.
SIG officials consider the future facility as the company’s “single biggest investment.” The company’s other investments in the past included infrastructure improvements and installation of carbon dioxide recovery plants for the food grade and industrial sector, as well as nitrous oxide plants, among others.
SIG was established in 1993 through a joint venture between the Aboitiz Company and the British Oxygen Company (BOC). In 1999, SIG was 100-percent-owned by BOC, which turned the company over to the Linde Group in 2006.
SIG now has 21 gas and gear centers and seven production sites in the Visayas and Mindanao. Its sister company in Luzon is the Consolidated Industrial Gases Inc.
Both companies, which have the country’s largest network of gas production and distribution centers, produce compressed industrial gases, such as oxygen, nitrogen, argon, carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, acetylene and special gases, as well as welding equipment and safety products.
Last Saturday, SIG employees and volunteers held a medical mission in Barangay Panadtaran, San Fernando, where one of their plants is located.
More than a hundred residents availed themselves of free medical services and attended a lecture on health and wellness. (NRC)
