Fillip To Ship-Building & Repairs: L&T Builds First Indigenous Dry Dock
In under two years, Larsen &Toubro (L&T),has commissioned the first home-built dry dock using digital 3D technologies for accurate implementation of specifications.
The diversified engineering, construction, defence manufacturing, infrastructure building, financial services etc. major has created a new milestone both for itself and the country. And this, at a time when Government policy, crucially, is supportive of such an initiative.
The brand new high-tech facility (FDN-2), that floats at 8,000 tonnes displacement, will mainly target the repairs of Indian Navy ships and submarines plying between the mainland and Port Blair in the Andamans.
It is located at the company's own L&T Shipyard, at Kattupalli, near Chennai in Tamil Nadu.
Winning an Indian Navy tender for the purpose at Rs. 468 crores in May 2015, the floating "dry dock", was designed and built on time by L&T.
Launched this week into the waters of the Bay of Bengal, by Indian Navy Vice Admiral DM Deshpande, Controller of Warship Production & Acquisition, and his wife Anjali Deshpande, the 185 metre long and 40 metre wide floating dock will go operational within eight weeks.
It features an automated ballast control system, the latest machinery and control systems, and all necessary safety features to protect the docking naval assets.
While ship-repairs and dry-docking has been operational for over a century in India, starting in colonial times, it has never before been part of a massive and comprehensive Make In India initiative, particularly aimed at the lucrative defence production area.
Defence production has been thrown open to the privates, foreign enterprise, and joint ventures with suitable international partners, for the first time in a determined manner.
This, in order to save foreign exchange, make overall savings, acquire technologies and skills, gain strategic control of the milllitary machine, achieve force multipliers, and increase implementation speed.
What was lacking in recent times, with the exception of another private defence oriented shipyard, built and owned by Reliance in Gujarat, were state-of-the-art facilities.
This is because the Government resources are stretched, and the smaller privates could not cope with the capital intensive and high technology nature of keeping up with international shipyards and dry docks.
Almost all significant ship-building and repairs conducted within India, even as bigger jobs went abroad, or were bought out in toto, have been in Government hands so far. This, despite the under funding, expertise gaps,inadequate technology, and the lack of a sense of professionalism that comes from the profit motive.
While these Government establishments continue even now, the big boys from the private sector have also made an entrance.
The Pipaphav ship yard and dry dock for example, created by Anil Ambani led Reliance Defence and Engineering Limited (RDEL), has some Rs. 5,700 crores of small craft repairing in-hand. These include offshore patrol vehicles,small naval refits,offshore supply vehicle repairs,servicing a couple of oil rigs,a clutch of fast patrol boats, and even a Panamax bulk carrier.
But this is not particularly representative of the potential. RDEL has recently been permitted to bid for Rs. 30,000 crores in Indian Navy contracts.
Reliance, Mahindra, Tata, like L&T, expect defence manufacturing'maintenance/repairs/refitting, for all the sections of the Indian military, to become a major part of its business in years to come.
The Prime Minister, on his part, wants at least $150 billion worth of defence production to be carried out within India in the near future.
This L&T home-grown floating dock is a first piece of enabling infrastructure for the company. It implies, that soon, much bigger shipyards and dry docks will also be indigenously built, by L&T and other Indian companies, along the coastline.
This might obviate the need to go abroad for commissioning or refurbishment/repair of the bigger Indian Navy ships.
This move to set up our own cutting edge facilities will also attract foreign investment and overseas business from countries that wish to tap our resources, and exponentially improve our skilling in this specialised area.
According to an occasional paper from the Export-Import Bank of India (EXIM) from 8 years ago, India's public sector Cochin Shipyard and Hindustan Shipyard had the infrastructure to build vessels of 1.1 lakh dry weight tonnes (dwt) and 80,000 dwt respectively. This has not changed much since then.
In 2009 also, Indian shipyards had orders for 260 ships representing just 1% of global tonnage (GT), and 2.8% in terms of bookings. This is no more than a negligible presence.
By way of contrast, China was building 3,523 ships, South Korea- 1675, Japan-1286 and Europe, all told, was building 447 ships, all in the same year.
Though global ship-building has halved since the economic crash of 2008, the need for India to build up its Navy to counter the challenges from China in the region has grown urgent.
Servicing this need can, and will, lead to exponential growth for both the private and public sectors, given the indigenous policy thrust.
The civilian ship repair industry in 2009, itself stood at about $12 billion, but India was tapping under $100 million of it.
The potential to grow in various directions therefore, is massive. The opportunity in repairs and refurbishment of international commercial shipping, perhaps with their entrenched arrangements in recessionary times, is not so great for India.
But under the present enlightened and liberalised policies, nothing can prevent a resurgent Indian capability, or even high tech joint ventures with suitable expertise from abroad, from servicing the growing needs of Indian commercial shipping and the Indian Navy.
It is not just in repairs,refits, and refurbishments, and not even in building new warships and submarines according to Indian Navy designs, but in R&D and the use of new technologies such as digital 3D that can transform our design and build capabilities.
India, working through its Defence Research & Development Organisation (DRDO), is currently collaborating on transfer of technologies on six of the Kalavari variant of the French diesel-electric Scorpene class submarines. These are being built in the Government's Mazagaon Docks in Mumbai.
There is no reason why India cannot build the next six, perhaps along with the private sector, and on its own.
For: SIRFNews
June 21st 2017
Gautam Mukherjee
In under two years, Larsen &Toubro (L&T),has commissioned the first home-built dry dock using digital 3D technologies for accurate implementation of specifications.
The diversified engineering, construction, defence manufacturing, infrastructure building, financial services etc. major has created a new milestone both for itself and the country. And this, at a time when Government policy, crucially, is supportive of such an initiative.
The brand new high-tech facility (FDN-2), that floats at 8,000 tonnes displacement, will mainly target the repairs of Indian Navy ships and submarines plying between the mainland and Port Blair in the Andamans.
It is located at the company's own L&T Shipyard, at Kattupalli, near Chennai in Tamil Nadu.
Winning an Indian Navy tender for the purpose at Rs. 468 crores in May 2015, the floating "dry dock", was designed and built on time by L&T.
Launched this week into the waters of the Bay of Bengal, by Indian Navy Vice Admiral DM Deshpande, Controller of Warship Production & Acquisition, and his wife Anjali Deshpande, the 185 metre long and 40 metre wide floating dock will go operational within eight weeks.
It features an automated ballast control system, the latest machinery and control systems, and all necessary safety features to protect the docking naval assets.
While ship-repairs and dry-docking has been operational for over a century in India, starting in colonial times, it has never before been part of a massive and comprehensive Make In India initiative, particularly aimed at the lucrative defence production area.
Defence production has been thrown open to the privates, foreign enterprise, and joint ventures with suitable international partners, for the first time in a determined manner.
This, in order to save foreign exchange, make overall savings, acquire technologies and skills, gain strategic control of the milllitary machine, achieve force multipliers, and increase implementation speed.
What was lacking in recent times, with the exception of another private defence oriented shipyard, built and owned by Reliance in Gujarat, were state-of-the-art facilities.
This is because the Government resources are stretched, and the smaller privates could not cope with the capital intensive and high technology nature of keeping up with international shipyards and dry docks.
Almost all significant ship-building and repairs conducted within India, even as bigger jobs went abroad, or were bought out in toto, have been in Government hands so far. This, despite the under funding, expertise gaps,inadequate technology, and the lack of a sense of professionalism that comes from the profit motive.
While these Government establishments continue even now, the big boys from the private sector have also made an entrance.
The Pipaphav ship yard and dry dock for example, created by Anil Ambani led Reliance Defence and Engineering Limited (RDEL), has some Rs. 5,700 crores of small craft repairing in-hand. These include offshore patrol vehicles,small naval refits,offshore supply vehicle repairs,servicing a couple of oil rigs,a clutch of fast patrol boats, and even a Panamax bulk carrier.
But this is not particularly representative of the potential. RDEL has recently been permitted to bid for Rs. 30,000 crores in Indian Navy contracts.
Reliance, Mahindra, Tata, like L&T, expect defence manufacturing'maintenance/repairs/refitting, for all the sections of the Indian military, to become a major part of its business in years to come.
The Prime Minister, on his part, wants at least $150 billion worth of defence production to be carried out within India in the near future.
This L&T home-grown floating dock is a first piece of enabling infrastructure for the company. It implies, that soon, much bigger shipyards and dry docks will also be indigenously built, by L&T and other Indian companies, along the coastline.
This might obviate the need to go abroad for commissioning or refurbishment/repair of the bigger Indian Navy ships.
This move to set up our own cutting edge facilities will also attract foreign investment and overseas business from countries that wish to tap our resources, and exponentially improve our skilling in this specialised area.
According to an occasional paper from the Export-Import Bank of India (EXIM) from 8 years ago, India's public sector Cochin Shipyard and Hindustan Shipyard had the infrastructure to build vessels of 1.1 lakh dry weight tonnes (dwt) and 80,000 dwt respectively. This has not changed much since then.
In 2009 also, Indian shipyards had orders for 260 ships representing just 1% of global tonnage (GT), and 2.8% in terms of bookings. This is no more than a negligible presence.
By way of contrast, China was building 3,523 ships, South Korea- 1675, Japan-1286 and Europe, all told, was building 447 ships, all in the same year.
Though global ship-building has halved since the economic crash of 2008, the need for India to build up its Navy to counter the challenges from China in the region has grown urgent.
Servicing this need can, and will, lead to exponential growth for both the private and public sectors, given the indigenous policy thrust.
The civilian ship repair industry in 2009, itself stood at about $12 billion, but India was tapping under $100 million of it.
The potential to grow in various directions therefore, is massive. The opportunity in repairs and refurbishment of international commercial shipping, perhaps with their entrenched arrangements in recessionary times, is not so great for India.
But under the present enlightened and liberalised policies, nothing can prevent a resurgent Indian capability, or even high tech joint ventures with suitable expertise from abroad, from servicing the growing needs of Indian commercial shipping and the Indian Navy.
It is not just in repairs,refits, and refurbishments, and not even in building new warships and submarines according to Indian Navy designs, but in R&D and the use of new technologies such as digital 3D that can transform our design and build capabilities.
India, working through its Defence Research & Development Organisation (DRDO), is currently collaborating on transfer of technologies on six of the Kalavari variant of the French diesel-electric Scorpene class submarines. These are being built in the Government's Mazagaon Docks in Mumbai.
There is no reason why India cannot build the next six, perhaps along with the private sector, and on its own.
For: SIRFNews
June 21st 2017
Gautam Mukherjee
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