Being boundaryless

Brunner Mond | Magadi Soda | Khet-Se | General Chemical Industrial Products

Apart from Tata Chemicals' Indian operations, the company has established a network across the globe, with plants and facilities in the US, UK, Europe and Africa, making it the world's second largest and most geographically diversified soda ash company. The company's range of soda ash and soda bicarbonate products find applications across industries ranging from glass and detergents to healthcare and effluent treatment.

The group is headquartered in Northwich, UK, where it also has two manufacturing plants. The company produces soda ash, sodium bicarbonate, calcium chloride and associated alkaline chemicals. Its main manufacturing centres are located at Northwich, UK, Delfzijl in The Netherlands and Lake Magadi, Kenya, one of the largest sources of natural soda ash in the world.

Magadi Soda
MSC is Africa's largest soda ash manufacturer and one of Kenya's leading exporters. The company was registered in England in 1911 and became a wholly owned subsidiary of Brunner Mond in 1924. MSC, located at Lake Magadi, about 120km from Nairobi, was acquired along with Brunner Mond by Tata Chemicals in 2006.

The company mines soda ash from naturally occurring deposits of an ore known as trona, located at the base of the Rift Valley, near Lake Magadi. MSC also supplies crushed refined soda, obtained by crushing and washing the trona ore. This product has the same properties as sodium sesquicarbonate. The company also manufactures salt from the waters of Lake Magadi. The salt is sold in the domestic market.

Khet-Se is a B2B cash and carry business for fresh fruit and vegetables sourcing, packaging and distribution across India. Khet-Se will leverage the strengths of both parent companies and play an important role by bringing the Indian farmer closer to the end consumer and thus help in raising farm incomes.

The objective of the joint venture company is to create state-of-the-art distribution facilities for fresh vegetables and fruits across India. This venture involves setting up of a number of collection and processing centres and setting up of a cold chain for reaching fresh produce to distribution centres located near main consumption centres. Khet-se formally commissioned its first collection cum distribution centre in 2008.

Khet-Se will bring about a change in the way the fresh produce category operates by targeting the small fruit and vegetable retailer through its conveniently located wholesale stores. It will cater to registered B2B customers such as small retailers, organised retailers and institutional segments comprising of hotels, restaurants and caterers. Khet-Se offers the benefit of hygienically handled, high quality produce, which is delivered absolutely fresh to its B2B customer segments.

General Chemical Industrial Products (GCIP)
GCIP, along with its subsidiary General Chemical (Soda Ash) Partners is one of the largest soda ash producers in the US. Established in 1884, this US based company was majority owned by investments firm Harbinger Capital Partners, before it was acquired by Tata Chemicals in January 2008.

The company's mining and manufacturing facilities located at Green Valley Basin in Wyoming, USA, are assets of very high quality, providing access to some of the world's largest and most economically recoverable deposits of trona ore, a naturally occurring ore of soda ash. The trona deposits here are up to 37 feet thick and spread over nearly 1000 sqkm. The ore is exceptionally pure and readily convertible to high quality soda ash. The site is estimated to contain 134 billion tonnes of mineable trona, enough to meet global soda ash demand for hundreds of years at current levels of consumption. The facility consists of an underground trona mine and a refining plant on the surface. The company extracts more than 4.5 million tonnes every year from the mine which is 1,600 feet below and spans more than 20 square miles.