Bharati buys Swan

Bharati Shipyard (BSL), India?s second-largest private sector ship-builder, is understood to have acquired the UK-based Swan Hunter Shipyard for an undisclosed amount.

“The entire machinery and equipment from Swan Hunter will be dismantled and brought to India over six months to be re-built at Bharati?s shipyards,” sources said.

The sources said the acquisition might be one of the biggest deals to date in India?s shipbuilding industry. A comparable new shipyard would have cost Rs 200-250 crore.

A spokesperson for BSL declined to comment, saying, “As a company policy we do not react on market speculation.”

This acquisition assumes significance given the fact that all international shipyards are fully booked until end 2009. BSL recently forayed into offshore rig construction and this acquisition will also bolster its new line of products including offshore structures.

Bharati is developing a green-field shipyard in Mangalore and ramping up facilities at the Ratnagiri yard. According to shipping experts, “The acquisition is extremely beneficial to Bharati as it can scale up operations quickly. Also it can execute more orders and make substantial savings in time and resources as it would have taken more than two years to build a similar infrastructure indigenously.”

Through this acquisition, BSL is expected to have fully automated panel line, quayside travelling gantry cranes of up to 180 tonne capacity, 30 overhead travelling cranes of up to 60 tonne capacity, plate rolls, bending presses, robotic profiling machines, and digitally fed plasma burning equipment. This will enable BSL to build ships and vessels with the capacity of up to 60,000 DWT.

Bharati will also acquire the 20,000-ton lift capacity floating dock of Swan Hunter, which will add a lot of value to its existing operation.