Cochin launches small ship division

The newly commissioned small ship division (SSD) of India’s government-owned Cochin Shipyard Ltd. (CSL) expects to generate annual revenues of Rs5bn ($99m).

The revenue will allow the yard to take on the concurrent construction of commercial ships and the country’s first indigenous aircraft carrier for the Indian Navy.

At an inauguration ceremony, Shipping Minister TR Baalu said that the new division, set up at a cost of Rs980m, would further enhance the performance of the yard, which had manufactured and delivered 23 vessels to date, and has another 18 under construction. “It is heartening to see the profitable manner in which CSL has been functioning, with net profit increasing by 60% in 2007-2008 over 2006-2007, in the face of a 25.6% improvement in turnover,” the minister said. “The SSD will make the yard more versatile.”

CSL has already built a number of platform supply vessels of the Rolls Royce UT-755-L design last year for customers including Norwegian offshore service supplier Deep Sea Supply and Greece’s Hellespont Steamship.

“Small ships hold out big promise, particularly since Oil & Natural Gas Corp and Shipping Corp of India would need several replacements in the near future for their offshore supply vessels,” said CSL chairman and managing director M Jitendran.

“We have decided to specialise in the construction of sophisticated offshore supply vessels, anchor handling tugs and other small craft of less than 2,000 dwt. We have 18 such vessels in our order-book.”

The SSD will be fully operational by 2015, and would have the capability of building up to eight vessels annually.