Small and micro industrialists from the district say the hike in the price of diesel and other petroleum products has affected them in more ways than one. Several small plants such as job-work industries, foundries, forging industries and foundries use diesel and other petroleum products for furnaces and heat treatment equipment. Small and micro industrialists say the price of oil used as fuel in furnaces and heat treatment equipment has almost doubled in the past two years.S Surulivel, president of the Coimbatore Sidco Industrial Estate Manufacturers Welfare Association, said around 15% of small and micro industries used diesel and other petroleum products such as furnace oil, hydraulic oil, core oil, lubricating oil for several machines. The rates of all these products have increased, he said. “For example, the price of hydraulic oil, which was Rs88 to Rs90 earlier, had now hit Rs120 to Rs130,” he says.Several small industries which involve processes such as investment casting, forging and heat-treatment are oil-intensive. Furnaces are mainly oil-fired and the price of furnace oil, which was around Rs20 two years ago, is around Rs40 now, say industrialists. Small industrialists say they buy oil for industrial purposes in bulk in batches of 10,000 litres directly from oil companies.R Nagarajan, who has a plant at the Sidco Industrial Estate, says every month his plant needs around 20,000 litres of oil for job-work operations, and around 9,000 litres of diesel for diesel-fired generators and for transportation. “As the rate of oil has doubled and diesel prices have also gone up, our production cost is almost doubled. But customers don’t increase the amount they pay. Because of this, we incur loss for several components we process,” he said.Overall, the increase in the prices of petroleum products has eaten away 12% of their profits, says Surulivel. A Mahalingam, another small industrialist, said as customers revise the price they pay for the products only once a year, they had to bear the increase in production costs.“Small and micro industries are on the verge of slipping into the perilous state they were in during the power cut era,” added Nagarajan.

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