KPT repair facility at Tuna

AHMEDABAD: Kandla Port Trust’s (KPT) proposal for a mega shipyard and ship repair facility on a build-operate-and-transfer (BOT) basis has started evoking response from private players. Two companies — ABG Shipyard, India’s biggest ship-building company in the private sector, and Bharati Shipyard — have already written to the KPT expressing their interest in partnering this Rs 400-crore project proposed at Tuna, near the Kandla port.

The response from the industry comes even as the port trust is yet to invite global tenders for the project.ABG Shipyard is already constructing its second shipyard at Dahej with an investment of Rs 400 crore. The company is looking at expanding its footprint in the state. “Tuna would definitely be a much better site than Dahej considering more water depth as well as huge back-up land area,” sources in ABG said. The company was also shortlisted, along with two others, by the Gujarat government for buying out the state-owned shipbuilding company Alcock Ashdown (Gujarat).

The shipyard has been envisaged under the National Maritime Development Programme (NMDP). It includes two repair jetties with a length of 500-600 metres and two graving dry docks 250-metre long and 45-metre wide. The KPT would soon be appointing an advisory service who would prepare the tender documents to be floated for this shipyard.

“We are quite optimistic that many big international shipbuilding companies would also be interested in joining us as the private partner,” KPT’s chief mechanical engineer AK Gadkari said. The techno-economic feasibility for this shipyard has been completed and the tenders will be invited in 5-6 months’ time.

The Kandla port has written to the union ministry for shipping and road transport that Tuna could be considered as the ideal site as it meets all the parameters such as requirement of land and depth of water required to build vessels up to 3 lakh dead weight tonnage (DWT) as proposed in this yard.