Matix Fertilisers and Chemicals, the flagship company of the Matix Group, is raising around Rs 3,500 crore from a consortium of banks for one of the world’s largest single stream gas based ammonia cum urea plants in Panagarh, West Bengal.

A person close to the development told Financial Chronicle, that the company, owned by Nishant Kanodia of Datamatics Group, is rai­sing the debt from a con­sortium of six to eight banks, lead arranged by IDBI Bank in a month’s time.

The equity contribution for the Rs 5,000 crore project is around Rs 1,500 crore, the person said.

Matix is developing a 3 million tonnes per annum (mtpa) plant to cater to the huge shortfall of urea in West Bengal and its surro­unding regions of Orissa, Bihar and Jharkhand.

The Matix plant will help in reducing this shortfall to 4 mtpa in three years time in a radius of around 350 kilometers. The company is also setting up a large dealer networks for marketing and distribution of urea to farmers in the region.

“Matix has identified around 1000 dealers and is expected to shortlist arou­nd 500-600 dealers to distribute the product to the farmers in short time,” the person said.

In the first phase of development the company is setting up around 1.5 mtpa of ammonia and urea capacity, which would be commissioned by 2012.

The orders for equip­ment have been finalised with global equipment supp­l­­iers, and construction on the site has begun. KBR of the US and Saipem of Italy are among strategic inter­national partners providing technology, basic and detail­ed engineering, procu­re­me­nt, construction and comm­issioning support. The Matix plant will be the first urea plant in the world with feed­stock supply of coal bed met­h­ane (CBM) gas exclusively sourced from Essar Gro­up’s Raniganj CBM block, near Panagarh in West Ben­gal.