This is the shipyards largest ever investment in terms of capacity expansion.
The shipyard is India’s largest and the third in Mumbai listed yards, will have the new Rs1,799 crore new dry dock. The dry dock will put Cochin Shipyard in the elite list of global yards that can build large LNG carriers, Capesize and Suezmax vessels, oil rigs, semi submersibles and other large vessels.
The Rs970 crore international ship repair facility at Willingdon Island in adjacent Cochin Port, also state-owned, will bolster India’s ship repair capacity and position it as a repair hub in the region.
“With these two projects, we are creating high grade infrastructure for the country,” said Madhu Nair, Chairman and Managing Director, Cochin Shipyard, who is credited with changing the stature of the Kochi-based yard from a sleepy, also ran yard into a shipbuilder of global repute by building India’s first indigenous aircraft carrier and other niche vessels encompassing innovative and new technology to promote green shipping.
Cochin Shipyard currently can build and repair ships of as much as 1,25,000 dead weight tons (DWT). The new dry dock will start operations in May/June by laying the keel for a so-called trailing suction hopper dredger (TSHDs) having a hopper capacity of 12,000 cubic metres for state-owned Dredging Corporation of India Ltd (DCI), costing more than Rs800 crore. TSHDs are used to maintain the channel of ports.
