Nitin Fire sees growth fuel in CNG cylinders

Mumbai-based Nitin Fire Protection Industries Ltd, traditionally a fire protection company, is banking on its new CNG cylinders business for the next level of growth. The company entered manufacturing of CNG cylinders in April 2008 and plans to reach optimum capacity in the next two years.

Kunal Shah, director, Nitin Fire, said, “With greater emphasis on CNG-driven vehicles, there is a huge market unfolding before us. We are already supplying our CNG cylinders to two of the biggest retrofitters in the country.”

Nitin Fire has a manufacturing plant in Visakhapatnam with a capacity of 500,000 cylinders per annum. The plant currently manufactures 15,000 cylinders a month. The company has two subsidiaries in the cylinders market - Eurotech, which markets industrial cylinders imported from China, and Nitin Cylinders Ltd, which manufactures CNG cylinders. Shah said, “With gas from the KG basin about to flow in a few months, the CNG market in the country will experience a major change. This is what we are banking on.”

He said the company has already obtained all the necessary approvals. The Visakhapatnam facility is equipped to manufacture cylinders in the range of 3 litres to 250 litres, with thrust on large-sized cylinders required by buses and cars. The next growth area, said Shah, will be the company’s intelligent building management systems (IBMS) division which is getting a lot of enquiries, especially after the November 26, 2008, terror attacks on Mumbai.

Despite slowdown blues, Nitin Fire sees its flagship business - fire suppression and detection -growing at a rate of 20-25% next year, he said.