A heartening feature of the Long Service awards given away this year was the fact a number of employees were honoured for completing 35 years of service. The oldest of them, S B Prabhakar Rao, Executive Director, Corporate Affairs, recalled with nostalgia and a touch of humour his long association with the group, starting with his reading out the day’s newspapers to S N N Sankaralinga Iyer, the founder of the group. The others were V Sundararaman, P S Natarajan, Jayanthi Srinivasan and K Srinivasan. Two of them spoke to us of their experience in Sanmar.
People may believe that I have stuck on with Chemplast Sanmar for over 35 years due to lack of better opportunities or right openings elsewhere. But it is not so. Headhunters did approach me many a time with tempting offers.
I have not been inclined to act on these offers since all my material
needs and most of my wants are met in Chemplast Sanmar. I believe I am valued here and I add value.
When I was asked to take care of PVC expansion projects escalating the capacity to 60000 TPA and 48000 TPA, which I did successfully, I was being valued. When I was entrusted with carrying out projects on environmental issues such as demercurisation in caustic and hydrogen, rainwater harvesting, the sewage treatment plant and secured landfill for hazardous waste, I took up the challenge, I added value.
I joined Chemplast in 1967 when the plant erection was in full swing. Commissioning activities were taken up in May 1967. Though we had a few experts from B F Goodrich assisting us, we faced several problems in the initial period. After a brief period in the utilities, I was transferred to
the Polymer Plant. Though suspension resin manufacturing was stabilized, paste resin consistency and quality were an issue.
We overcame several operationalproblems like frequent power interruptions, but polymeriser reactor rupture disc failures, quality issues in the key raw material etc., were a challenge. The key technical team comprising S R Seshadri, R Kalidas, P N Devarajan, A K Sethurathnam, R Sundaresan, and D Ramaganesan could be seen inside the plant any time of the day or night to sort out problems.
Mettur was a sleepy village with virtually no facility and there was nothing to attract them.
Rapid expansion and modernization were seen after Mr N Sankar took over the operation in 1977. The capacity of the plant was expanded severalfold toits present capacity, with state-of-the-art facilities like upgradation of instrumentation and control, organic waste incinerator, oxychlorination plant, VCM containment technology etc.
I am happy that I was part of this operation for almost four decades.