A recent oil spill on the shores of the Bay of Bengal in India at Ennore port deeply affected the marine life and the pristine beaches of Marina, in Chennai, India. 

To aid in the clean-up activities, a Chennai based maritime company, NAVTEK has come-up with a timely solution and has used its environmentally friendly absorbent nonwoven mats at the spill site. NAVTEK has been in the works for a number of months now to refine its technology and has launched a product that is much more environmentally friendly than synthetic polypropylene mats, according to the company. NAVTEK has added 100% biodegradable nonwoven mats and oil sorbents to its product range. The sorbent is constructed with a biodegradable core with a synthetic nonwoven casing.

Today, NAVTEK tested its product at Ennore port. Mr. T. S. Rangarajan, vice president-Technical of NAVTEK, told Mr. Seshadri Ramkumar of Texas Tech University he personally evaluated the product on the oil spill site. “Our mats absorbed the oil instantaneously.”

According to Rangarajan, the mat was able to absorb minimum 10 times its weight of oil in first shot of soaking. This ties in well with the company’s earlier tests, which were carried out according to international standard by a third party accredited laboratory.

Companies like NAVTEK are contributing to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “Make in India,” effort by manufacturing and marketing Indian made products to solve global problems. According to NAVETK, they are also exploring international markets for their products as well.