Crucial meet on Hindustan Shipyard Ltd revival

A high-level delegation of HHI, led by its vice-president and COO Jeong Hwan Kim has just now concluded its two-day visit to HSL in Vizag and had now flown to Delhi for the crucial phase of discussions in which HSL representatives are hopeful that a road map emerges for the revival of the MoD-controlled shipyard.

HSL has been financially sick and looking for orders from the MoD while other defence-controlled yards have enough work orders. At present, HSL has an order book of meager Rs 1,500 crore.

HSL is the first ISO-9001 ship-building company in the country. The yard has been transferred to the MoD in 2010 to facilitate construction of sophisticated warships, submarines and strategic vessels for Indian Navy and Coast Guard. Since independence, on an average in a year three ships were built at Vizag shipyard and in total until now, around 173 vessels were built and 2,000 have been repaired.

There are around 1,800 permanent workers and more than 2,000 work-on-contract basis. Around 10,000 are indirectly dependant on the HSL. “We hope that a road map on the collaboration of HHI will come out which will help the yard’s revival. The HHI team looks to be satisfied with the facilities available here and opined that technical collobartion will actually help the yard turn around. This will also help us bag the Indian Navy’s prestigious six submarines construction project- P 75 (I),” said a senior official of the HSL.

HSL CMD N.K. Mishra also on Wednesday flew to Delhi to take part in the discussions. HSL had already signed an MoU with HHI in January for technical collaboration to build submarines. A team from HSL led by Mr Mishra has visited South Korea to sign the MoU. A team from the HHI had also visited Vizag’s shipyard to assess the facilities here last time. HHI team’s latest visit is the second one in less than a year.