As climate change looms, Cochin Shipyard going big on `green ships'

India's leading shipbuilder Cochin Shipyard Ltd (CSL) is focusing on building modern vessels powered by green energy, as it looks to deliver 65 ships worth over ₹22,000 crore from global and domestic clients, including the Indian Navy.

Amid global concerns over carbon emissions, the CSL's focus is gradually shifting to building 'green ships' - vessels that run on less-polluting fuels such as methanol, electricity, green hydrogen, and hybrid batteries.

“The CSL has an all-time high order book of around ₹22,000 crore, involving building 65 ships, with bulk of the orders for making 14 Naval ships and 22 coastal ships for the European clients including those from Germany, Norway, Cyprus and the Netherlands," the CSL chairman and managing director, Madhu S. Nair, told Mint in an interview. "Apart from these, we have our focus on making green ships and are already fulfilling orders from abroad for hydrogen fuel cell and methanol ships, electric ships, hybrid ships and other sophisticated ships - commissioning, support and operations vessels (CSOV) for a British as well as a German- Cyprus clients.” 

Keen on tech transfer with European companies

While most of the green ship technologies involving fuel cell, methanol, and electric are being incorporated at present, and the CSL uses them to make ships for the western markets, it is now looking at technology transfer agreements with a few European shipping technology companies to scale up and take up complete manufacturing of these new-age ships for both global and Indian markets.

“Under the 'Make in India, make for the world' plan, we now have global partnerships in all areas where domestic technology has not matured. We will also look at technology transfer from some of our partners. Other than that, we have developed technology for small vessels running on hydrogen fuel cells. A ferry built on this technology will be tested on our inland waterways near Varanasi. It would be a technology demonstrator now and would be scaled up and adopted in future for commercial production of these green vessels,” Mr Nair added.

The state-run CSL, which has its main ship manufacturing facility in Kochi, also has subsidiary companies, one based out of Kolkata, and another based out of Udupi in Karnataka that make both coastal and green ships for Indian and European clients. In addition, CSL also has three smaller ship repair units outside Kochi — in Mumbai, Kolkata and Port Blair.

Ship repair capability set to expand

The company invested close to ₹3,000 crore this year to complete the work on a 310-metre-long dry dock, and another international ship repair facility (ISRF) at Kochi. This is expected to raise the repair capability from under 100 ships a year to over 160 ships, allowing teh CSL to take up ships repair work in a big way for the global market. Another ship repair facility is being explored on the West Coast to service demand coming from passing vessels.

“We have just now operationalised the two facilities with flooding of the dry dock and getting three ship repair orders for ISRF. We are trying to further expand the ship repair facility. Between these two investments and our expansions in Kolkata, we invested about ₹3,200 crore over last five years. Further investments would be considered as and when opportunity arises. The company is focused on streamlining and improving execution of its current orders rather than immediate capacity expansion,” Mr Nair said.

Udupi,Hooghly units for foreign vessels 

The Udupi and Hooghly facilities are being considered to service largely international clients and high technology products including green ships, green tugs and coastal ships in demand from European clients. The Kochi facility would cater to demand from the Indian Navy and new technology demonstrator products including production of large-sized vessels.

Earlier this month, the CSL laid the keel of India's largest dredger DCI Dredge Godavari, marking a significant milestone in the country’s maritime capabilities. This trailing suction hopper dredger (TSHD) with a hopper capacity of 12,000 cubic meters is built for the Dredging Corporation of India Ltd. The Godavari is built in collaboration with Royal IHC, Netherlands. Once commissioned, this dredger will be the most sophisticated and technologically advanced dredger ever built in India.

(By arrangement with livemint.com)