The Cochin Shipyard is breaking new ground, literally, in its attempt to robustly contribute to enhancing India’s share in the global shipbuilding industry from the present 0.4% and to emerge as a contender for ship repair in the region on par with Sri Lanka (Colombo), the UAE (Dubai), Singapore and Bahrain, with work on a third, far bigger drydock at the northern end of the yard campus set to get under way on October 30.
“The new 310-m long drydock, which will enable us to build aircraft carriers with displacement of up to 70,000 tonnes and merchant ships of up to 55,000 tonnes, along with the new International Ship Repair Facility (ISRF) coming up on land leased from Cochin Port in the neighbourhood is sure to turn Kochi into a one-stop maritime hub,” maintains Madhu S. Nair, chairman and managing director of Cochin Shipyard, India’s largest PSU yard in terms of dock capacity.
Product profile
While the ₹1,799-crore drydock, which will help the yard diversify its product profile, is slated to be completed by May 2021, the ISRF with a shiplift, which costs ₹970 crore, is set for commissioning in November next year. The drydock will enable the yard to build complex technology-intensive vessels such as LNG carriers, large dredgers, jackup rigs and high-end research ships besides the second indigenous aircraft carrier for the Indian Navy, points out Mr. Nair.
It also has the potential to generate local employment in the thousands in core shipbuilding and in the ancillary industry, he says. The yard has already signed a ₹1,298.76-crore contract for construction of plant and machinery for the drydock with L&T Limited, Construction, Heavy Civil Infrastructure, Chennai.
Chief Minister Pinararyi Vijayan and Union Shipping Minister Nitin Gadkari will together break ground for the new drydock, which will be 75 m wide at its widest part and 60 m wide at its narrowest.
Contract
The contract with L&T is for completion of civil, mechanical, electrical, controls and networked systems and building services networks. The new drydock will be equipped with one gantry crane of 600-tonne capacity, two LLTT cranes of 75 tonnes each, with an option to add another 600-tonne gantry crane. Yard officials say that the cost of the project is met through the funds raised through the IPO last year and with internal funds.
The project for construction of the new drydock was approved by the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) in July 2016, and it received environmental clearance in November that year.
The drydock, designed for a design life of 100 years, is formed with high modulus steel embedded retaining wall for dock wall system anchored by tie rods and contiguous bored piles, dock floor resting on Reinforced Cement Concrete (RCC) piles, dock sill, entrance gates and copes constructed in the dry behind an entrance coffer dam.
