Sui Northern Pipeline Gas Limited (SNGPL) has planned to embark on a joint-venture with Sui Southern Gas Company Limited (SSGC) to operate a single-meter manufacturing plant in the country.
A notification issued to the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) revealed that the Sui Northern Pipeline Gas Limited board has given conceptual approval for the hiring of the services of a transaction advisory firm for the initiation of the due diligence of a meter manufacturing plant owned by SSGC, which includes financial, technical, legal and regulatory aspects.
Subsequent to the due diligence exercise, SNGPL will decide whether to form a joint venture with SSGC for this plant.
At present, SNGPL has been importing meters for customers. The decision of moving towards locally-made meters was made a couple of years ago based on various complaints about the faulty installation of meters by the gas distribution company in the northern region.
SSGC owns and operates Pakistan’s only gas meter manufacturing plant, under license from Itron, France, since 1992, and it has an annual production capacity of 356,000 meters on a single shift basis. While it produces and assembles meters if the customers’ demand grows, its capacity needs to be expanded to meet the country-wide demand for meters.
