There is a trend of relocating working/mothballed chemical manufacturing facilities from one location to other location. The reason for this relocation is primarily commercial or local legislation. The trend is to shift manufacturing units from Europe/north America to Asia or Africa. Since new location conditions have a great influence on the performance of the plant, detailed feasibility studies need to be carried out before taking a final call to relocate.
Following factors have a major influence in successful relocation of a manufacturing unit:
- Existing plant condition: A thorough review of existing plant condition, operation and maintenance practices, test records, visual Inspection, NDT …is required by competent and experienced team to ascertain realistic residual life of the plant.
- Existing technical documentation: Many a times, the technical documentation is found to be incomplete/inaccurate/obsolete or missing. In such case the documentation needs to be updated to the best possible extent before planning to relocate.
- Logistics challenges: Sometimes it may not be feasible to relocate site fabricated equipment like large storage tanks, underground tanks, ODCs structural steel etc and need to be disposed off and install new one at the new location.
- Local climatic conditions: Difference in existing and new local conditions has a major influence in redesigning Utilities and offsite. Particularly ambient conditions like temperature, humidity, elevation above sea level, available water quality etc. have a great influence on utilities like cooling water, Air.
- Local Soil condition: Topography, water table, SBC, Seismic zone etc of the new location also influences civil design work, that may also require to make a new equipment layout.
- Like for like replacement/upgrade: Many a times during dismantling the existing facility a situation may arise to replace existing equipment/Instrument with a new one (like for like). However due to technological developments, market conditions it may not be possible to get an exact replica and additional efforts are required to find a suitable alternative.
- Local legal compliance: All hardware that is planned to be relocated must comply with local legislation. Many a times equipment need to be re assessed and certified to meet legal obligations.
- Catalyst and chemicals: Future availability of catalyst for replacement used in the existing plant need to be critically reviewed. Many a times due to Geo-political reasons, this may be a challenge. Use of some specialty chemicals is banned /restricted for Import/export in countries. A careful assessment of these limitations is required.
- OEM support for Installation/re-commissioning/maintenance-spares: If the equipment is too old or a tailor made package, then OEM support for spares need to be ascertained in advance.
- New engineering documentation: Even though the existing plant has all the updated documentation, still some degree of engineering of main process plant is required (e.g. Complete Civil and Structural). Apart from that to meet local legislation technical documentation, test records needs to be reviewed and updated. Utilities and offsite may need to be completely redesigned to meet new location conditions. To meet local safety norms, some level of automation enhancement may be required. To comply with new location environmental norms, a new ETP may be required.
Summarizing, relocation of an existing facility is a complex project and the capital cost may be lower, however the cost of logistics, engineering and project management may be much higher than a new plant.
Process & Safety Consultant 