State-owned Garden Reach Shipbuilders & Engineers Ltd (GRSE) has become the first in India to bag a domestic order for commercial shipbuilding under the Centre's aggregate scheme.
The new order is from the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) for the construction of four Platform Supply Vessels (PSVs).
It was announced by GRSE in a Thursday stock filing, in which the company said it received the Notification of Award (NOA) for the four PSV vessels. The filing also states that the four vessels will be delivered within four years of the NOA date.
This comes after the defence shipbuilder quoted the lowest bid of ₹258 crore per vessel after bidding opened on July 23, which translates to ₹1,032.07 crore (including GST) for the whole four-vessel order.
PSVs are a type of offshore vessel used to transport people and essential equipment to and from offshore facilities, such as oil rigs, wind farms, and gas platforms.
These are also a part of the aggregate demand plan for commercial shipbuilding made by the Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways (MoPSW), which aims to create a unified push for about 430 Indian-owned ships over the next decade.
The Bharat Container Shipping Line (BCSL) consortium, which includes various maritime stakeholders, has become the face of this aggregate plan, as it brings together demands for BCSL container ships, as well as non-container ships like tankers and tugboats.
Other members of the consortium include the Shipping Corporation of India (SCI), Container Corporation of India (CONCOR), Jawaharlal Nehru Port Authority (JNPA), V.O. Chidambaranar Port Authority (VOCPA), Chennai Port Authority, and the Sagarmala Finance Corporation Limited (SMFCL).
The aggregate push is also a key part of the Centre's comprehensive package of Rs 69,725 crore for the allround development of India's maritime sector.
In fact, under the ₹24,736 crore Shipbuilding Financial Assistance Scheme (SBFAS) within the 2025 maritime package, GRSE is also eligible to get about 15-25 per cent financial assistance from the Centre per vessel.
How the bid will impact GRSE
The ONGC order marks a key push by the 'Navratna'-status Kolkata-based shipbuilder to propel India to become one of the world's top 10 shipbuilding nations by 2030 and one of the world's top five by 2047, in line with the Maritime India Vision 2030 and the Maritime Amrit Kaal Vision 2047.
This comes amid a slew of modernisation projects within its premises to upgrade its construction capacity from 28 to 32 vessels at a time. The projects are expected to be completed by December this year.
“The projects that we have taken on for expansion is for creation of two brownfield shipbuilding facilities in West Bengal, and two greenfield shipbuilding facilities, one in West Bengal and one in Gujarat,” Cmde P.R. Hari, Chairman and Managing Director, GRSE, told analysts earlier this year, as per an ET Infra report.
Earlier this month, it had also announced plans to form a joint venture (JV) with Modest Infrastructure Pvt Ltd, a unit of Goa’s Dempo Shipbuilding and Engineering Pvt Ltd, to set up a ₹3,000 crore integrated greenfield shipyard at Ratanpar in Gujarat’s Bhavnagar district.
This would mark the Ministry of Defence-monitored GRSE's first foray into shipbuilding outside its home state of Kolkata.
Under the JV, the new shipyard will be developed on 143 acres of land along the Gulf of Cambay, and will have the capacity to build vessels up to 45,000 deadweight tonnage (dwt) at a time, the report added.
This would translate into a proposed output of one 45,000 dwt ship, three 20,000 dwt ships, and six PSVs or related vessels per year.
Notably, modernising existing shipbuilding clusters or developing new ones also gets you government support under the ₹19,989 crore Shipbuilding Development Scheme (SbDS), which is another part of the 2025 maritime package.
