Production of urea fertilizer has been suspended at the state-owned Chittagong Urea Fertilizer Limited (CUFL) and Karnaphuli Fertilizer Company Limited (KAFCO) due to a severe gas crisis in Chattogram.
According to concerned sources, production activities at the factories were halted around 3pm on Wednesday following government directives.
However, urea production is still ongoing at Shahjalal Fertilizer Company Limited, but it is feared that this too could be suspended at any time if gas supply is not normalised.
Factory sources said that if operational, CUFL can produce approximately 1,100 metric tonnes of urea fertiliser per day. At an average price of Tk38,000 per metric tonne, the factory produces fertiliser worth about Tk4.18 crore daily.
This fully gas-dependent factory requires 48 to 52 million cubic feet of gas per day to operate at full capacity. Officials said production cannot be maintained normally due to shortages in gas supply and occasional mechanical faults.
Due to these problems in the last fiscal year, CUFL produced about 250,000 metric tonnes of urea. However, the annual demand for urea fertiliser in agriculture-dependent Bangladesh is about 2.6 million metric tons.
Of this, factories under the Bangladesh Chemical Industries Corporation (BCIC) can produce a total of about 1 million metric tons annually. The remaining approximately 1.6 million metric tons of urea must be met through imports.
Concerned officials said that prolonged factory shutdowns lead to various mechanical complications. Particularly, faults developing in the chemical transport lines cause delays in resuming production.
According to CUFL sources, the factory has remained out of production for long periods over the past two years, sometimes due to mechanical faults and other times due to gas supply stoppages. In the 2023-24 fiscal year, the factory operated for only five days.
Subsequently, production activities continued intermittently with shutdowns and restarts. Although the factory was restarted most recently on 2 March, production had to be halted again on Wednesday due to the gas crisis.
CUFL was established on 29 October 1987, on the southern bank of the Karnaphuli River in Rangadia, Anwara Upazila, Chittagong, with technical assistance from Japan. Initially, the factory’s daily production capacity was 1,700 metric tons of urea, amounting to about 561,000 metric tons annually. Currently, the factory is capable of producing approximately 1,100 metric tonnes of urea daily, along with about 800 metric tonnes of ammonia per day.
Head of Production Division at CUFL Uttam Chowdhury said urea production was suspended on Wednesday afternoon due to the gas supply stoppage. Production will resume once gas is available.
He informed that the factory has managed to produce about 65,000 metric tonnes of urea so far in the current 2025-26 fiscal year.
