KOLKATA: State-run warship-builder Garden Reach Shipbuilders & Engineers Ltd (GRSE) plans to invest about Rs 90 crore over the next four years to boost capacity for diversifying its product portfolio.
“We will augment overall capacity to 24 vessels at a time, up from 20 now, as we’re vying for export of ships, including commercial ships, in a big way,” said GRSE chairman and managing director Rear Admiral (Retd) V K Saxena.
The Kolkata-based shipyard, which is aiming to raise up to Rs 345 crore in divestment for the government through an initial public offering (IPO) soon, has an order book of over Rs 20,300 crore, which comes completely from Indian Navy.
Of this, over Rs 19,000 crore is from a single platform — the Project 17 Alpha. The delivery of the first vessel under Project 17 Alpha is scheduled in mid-2023; the second in 2024, and the last by August 2025, said Saxena.
Stepping up its efforts to become a global player, Saxena said negotiations are on with countries in South East Asia, West Asia, Africa and Latin America for undertaking commercial ship-building and exports.
“We have emerged as the lower bidder or L1 for building a passenger ship for Guyana and we expect to bag the order soon,” he said, adding that the order size may be Rs 100 crore, but the commercial details are yet to be finalised.
Till date, the ship-builder has executed just one export for the Mauritian government.
The company is also eyeing more repair contracts as a sizeable revenue stream going ahead.
“The Indian Naval fleet is aging and needs repairs. So, we are negotiating with the Navy on securing annual maintenance contracts and retrofitting works,” Saxena said, adding, the margin in repair business is around 25-27 per cent and is a faster revenue generation mode.
GRSE will be delivering ten warships to the Indian Navy by December 2019. The company also matched the lowest bidder’s quoted amount in a contract for eight vessels whose results will be known by December.
It aims to hand over the last anti-submarine warfare corvette of the P-28 project – Kavaratti — to the Indian Navy by May 2019.