Cochin Shipyard to build 21 vessels

Cochin Shipyard Limited (CSL), a government-owned ship building company, has orders for building 21 vessels.

These include 18 platform supply vessels and two bulk carriers apart from an aircraft carrier for the Indian Navy. The commercial building order of CSL is now worth above Rs 2,000 crore, a CSL press release stated.

M Jithendran, chairman, CSL, said the proposal to have a division exclusively for small ships was under consideration. CSL signed the phase 1 contract with the Indian Navy last month for building the Air Defence ship.

The company recorded an all-time high ship repair turnover of Rs 285 crore in 2006-07. Ship-building achievement during the period crossed 17,900 DWT,another all-time high of the company.

CSL on Wednesday handed over two ships "" Clipper Texan, fifth of the six 30,000 DWT bulk carrier for the Clipper Group of Denmark, and BY-059, a platform supply vessel to Deep Sea Supply of Norway. This was the fourth of a series of eight platform supply vessels built in the yard for the company.