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2020 ] DOMINO PRINTECH INDIA PVT. LTD. v. COMMR. OF C. EX., DELHI-III 105

“Wherever legislature wanted to declare the process of repacking into small
containers as amounting to manufacture it has so provided in the tariff by
inclusion of a specific note to that effect. This is evident from Chapter Note
2 of Chapter 9, Chapter Note 2 of Chapter 24, Chapter Note 5 of Chapter 30
and Chapter Note 4 of Chapter 33. There is, however, no such inclusion cor-
responding to these Chapter notes in Chapter 34 under which the Organic
Surface Active Agents fail. Therefore, the process of repacking undertaken
by the appellants is not a process of manufacture.”
26. Further, we find in the case of Safex Fire Systems (supra), wherein
the issue before this Tribunal was as under :
2. The appellant had paid duty on the small quantity of chemicals manu-
factured by it. It also procured quantities required of the chemicals for fill-
ing into the fire extinguisher when they were first sold or for refilling in the
extinguishers already sold by it, the maintenance of which it undertook a
contract, quantities which had been depleted due to natural causes or had
become unsuitable. It undertook the same activity with carbon dioxide. The
question for consideration in these appeals is whether such filling of the
chemicals and the carbon dioxide into the extinguisher, either in the appel-
lant’s own hands or the premises of the customer, amounts to manufacture.
In those set of facts, this Tribunal has obsessed as under :
4. It is not necessary for us to recount the judgment of the Supreme Court
and other Courts that manufacture necessarily requires the coming into ex-
istence of product that is distinctly different, with a different nomenclature,
character and end use. None of these requirements in our view is satisfied
by the activity carried out by the appellant. The appellant does not even
undertake that the mixture of the chemical, it not being disputed that the
sodium bicarbonate purchased by the appellant from elsewhere already
contained in it the required quantity of China clay and other chemicals
which are required to ensure its free flow and give it its characteristics of
fire extinction. We are not required to answer the question whether such
mixing amounts to manufacture. The simple process of packing this chemi-
cal mixture into the fire extinguisher cannot by any stretch of imagination
lead to manufacture. Its identity, use and nomenclature remains the same.
The same reasoning holds true for carbon dioxide. Packing larger container
into a smaller container of a gas cannot amount to manufacture.
5. Merely because the Indian Standard specification uses the words “dry
powder charge” it does not become a specific commodity different, liable to
duty. One of the meanings of the word “charge” in The New Shorter Ox-
ford Dictionary is “the quantity of something which a receptacle, mecha-
nism, etc., is designed to bear or receive at one time; especially the appro-
priate quantity of explosive for a gun”. That appears to be the meaning
where the term is used in the specific manner as signifying a quantity of
powder required for the application. It is interesting and significant to note
that the tariff heading has been taken from the Harmonised System of No-
menclature Explanatory Notes, which contain the same Heading 38.13 of
the Custom Corporation Council. The Explanatory Notes to this Nomencla-
ture in fact explain that charges for fire extinguisher classifiable under
heading 38.13 are light weight containers of glass thin sheet metal etc. de-
signed themselves into a fire extinguisher contain various preparation of
fire extinguisher with the nature of which is amplified further. By such def-
inition it is only a person who makes such containers who manufactures a

EXCISE LAW TIMES  1st April 2020  267