Cochin Shipyard has orders for 65 vessels worth ₹22,000 crore, eyes green ships

India's leading shipbuilder Cochin Shipyard Ltd (CSL) is focusing on building modern vessels powered by green energy, as it looks to deliver 65 ships worth over ₹22,000 crore from global and domestic clients, including the India Navy, its chairman and managing director Madhu S. Nair said.

The move comes amid global concerns over carbon emissions that exacerbate climate change, with the focus now gradually shifting to building 'green ships' - vessels that run on less-polluting fuels such as methanol, electricity, green hydrogen and hybrid batteries.

“CSL has an all-time high order book of around ₹22,000 crore, involving building 65 ships, with bulk of the orders for making 14 Naval ships and 22 coastal ships for the European clients including those from Germany, Norway, Cyprus and the Netherlands. Apart from these, we have our focus on making green ships and are already fulfilling orders from abroad for hydrogen fuel cell and methanol ships, electric ships, hybrid ships and other sophisticated ships - commissioning, support and operations vessels (CSOV) for a British and German- Cyprus clients,” Nair told Mint in an interview.

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Scaling up

While most of the green ship technologies involving fuel cell, methanol, and electric are being incorporated at present, and CSL uses them to make ships for the western markets, it is now looking at technology transfer agreements with a few European shipping technology companies to scale up and take up complete manufacturing of these new-age ships for both global and Indian markets.

“Under 'Make in India, make for the World', we are having global partnerships in all areas where domestic technology has still not matured. We will also look at technology transfer from some of our partners. Other than that, we have developed technology for small vessels running on hydrogen fuel cells. A ferry built on this technology will be tested on our inland waterways near Varanasi. It would be a technology demonstrator now and would be scaled up and adopted in future for commercial production of these green vessels,” Nair added.

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The state-run CSL, which has its main ship manufacturing facility in Kochi, also has subsidiary companies, one based out of Kolkata, and another based out of Udupi in Karnataka that make both coastal and green ships for Indian and European clients. In addition, CSL also has three smaller ship repair units outside Kochi — in Mumbai, Kolkata and Port Blair.

Ship repair facilities

The company invested close to ₹3,000 crore this year to complete work on a new 310-metre-long dry dock, and another international ship repair facility (ISRF) at Kochi. This is expected to raise ship repair facility from just below 100 ships per year now to over 160 ships, allowing it to take up ships repair work in a big way for the global market. Another ship repair facility is being explored on the West Coast to service demand coming from passing vessels.

Stock of Cochin Shipyard closed 10% higher at about ₹1,846 on the National Stock Exchange on Friday.

“We have just now operationalised the two facilities with flooding of the dry dock and getting three ship repair orders for ISRF. We are trying to further expand the ship repair facility. Between these two investments and our expansions in Kolkata, we invested about ₹3,200 crore over last five years. Further investments would be considered as and when opportunity arises. The company is focused on streamlining and improving execution of its current orders rather than immediate capacity expansion,” Nair said.

The Udupi and Hooghly facilities are being considered to service largely international clients and high technology products including green ships, green tugs and coastal ships in demand from European clients. The Kochi facility would cater to demand from the Indian Navy and new technology demonstrator products including production of large-sized vessels.

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Earlier this month, CSL laid the keel of India's largest dredger DCI Dredge Godavari, marking a significant milestone in the country’s maritime capabilities. This trailing suction hopper dredger (TSHD) with a hopper capacity of 12,000 cubic meters is built for the Dredging Corporation of India Ltd. DCI Dredge Godavari is built in collaboration with Royal IHC, Netherlands. Once commissioned, this dredger will be the most sophisticated and technologically advanced dredger ever built in India.