Engineering major Larsen and Toubro’s shipyard being set up at Kattupalli near here would become operational by coming January, a top company official said on Monday.
The shipyard would enable India to compete globally with Japan and Korea in building large-sized warships, car carriers and submarines, L&T Board Member and President (Heavy Engineering) M.V. Kotwal said.
The company in association with the Tamil Nadu Industrial Development Corporation, is setting up the Shipyard at an investment of Rs 4,000 crore for the first phase.
Addressing a session on “Consultative Meeting” “Vision 2025“- Industries, Mr. Kotwal said the company had invested Rs 4,000 crore for the first phase of the yard spread across 1,250 acres.
“It is going to be a monster of facilities.. It can handle 18,000 tonne ships and right now, the (work on) ship-lift is nearing completion... it will be operational by January 2012...,” he said.
Claiming that the yard was “indigenously designed” by L&T, Mr. Kotwal later told reporters that the first ship from the Kattupalli Shipyard was expected to be rolled out by 2012-13.
“By 2012-13 it (first ship) should be rolled out” he said to a query.
According to Mr. Kotwal, the Kattupalli Shipyard, located near Ennore Port, and the company’s another facility at Hazira (in Gujarat) would be simultaneously used by Larsen and Toubro for manufacturing ships.
The company was also setting up large workshops for repairs at Kattupalli. “Chennai is blessed geographically for setting up ship repairs as currently they are done only in Singapore and Colombo”, he said.
He said the company has bagged a project from the Coast Guard to manufacture 36 highspeed “interceptor” vessels which can travel upto 45 knots per hour. “We are thinking of distributing some orders to Kattupalli shipyard (from Hazira facility) once this becomes operational,” he said.
On financials he said the company as a group was expecting to report Rs 60,000 crore revenues during this financial year compared to last year’s Rs 52,000 crore.
He said the ship building industry was expected to touch USD 20 billion by 2020.
