Customs, Excise and Gold Tribunal - Mumbai
Commissioner Of Customs, Baroda vs Indian Petrochemicals Limited (Ipcl) on 29 October, 2001
JUDGMENT Gowri Shankar, Member (T)
1. I.P.C.L., the respondent to this appeal, was served a notice proposing to deny the modvat credit taken by it of the duty paid on aegron and mafron, refrigerant gases, and on other chemicals used by it to purify the water that it used in the plant for the manufacture of finished products. The notice proposed to deny the credit on the ground that these goods were also used for cooling and recirculating the cooling water system and for treatment of water and were therefore not inputs used in or in relation to manufacture of final products. Adjudicating on this notice, the Collector, in the order impugned in this appeal by the department, has found that the goods are very much inputs, without which the finished products cannot be manufactured. He held that the fact that they did not form part of finished products are not to be considered as inputs.
2. The ground in the appeal, that the issue before the Collector was not whether the goods did or did not form part of final products, in confused. There is no clear reason, in fact, is forthcoming as to why the goods are not to be treated as inputs. The reason appears to be that the goods did not form part of finished products.
3. The Tribunal in its judgment in Gujarat Alkalies & Chemicals Ltd. v. CCE 1995 (78) ELT 578 has held that mafron, a refrigerant gas, qualifies to be considered as an input without its use in the refrigerating system for cooling water which is used to draw heat in the reactors and other vessels of the plant, as part of the heat exchanger. The ratio of that decision would apply to the aegron and mafron before us.
4. In its decision in ICI Ltd. v. CCE 1995 (78) ELT 695 the Tribunal has held that chemicals, added to water treated to reduce formation of scales in the heat exchangers which are installed in the factory of the manufacturer, would qualify as input. That ratio would apply to the water treatment chemicals under consideration before us. We therefore find no ground to interfere.
5. Appeal dismissed.