Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders Ltd (MDL) on Tuesday signed an agreement with the National Shipbuilding & Heavy Industries Park Maharashtra Ltd (NSHIP-ML), a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) for the development of a greenfield shipbuilding cluster in Maharashtra's Dighi.
Under the new Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), MDL will invest about ₹15,000 crore into the proposed greenfield project, which will have an annual shipbuilding capacity of 1.2 million gross tonnes (GT).
It will also become the largest cluster of its kind in India after South Korean shipbuilder HD Hyundai Heavy Industries' upcoming project in Thoothukudi (Tuticorin), which will have a proposed shipbuilding output of 2.5 million GT per annum.
"It will enable the construction of large commercial vessels and help create a globally competitive maritime industrial ecosystem comprising ancillary industries, MSMEs, technology partners and skilled employment," MDL wrote in an X post on Tuesday.
The Dighi mega shipbulding cluster is also a step forward for India's larger goals under initiatives like the Maritime Amrit Kaal Vision 2047 and Make in India, as it will boost indigenous shipbuilding and contribute to capability building.
What is an anchor shipyard?
An anchor shipyard is the beating heart of the ecosystem that is a shipbuilding cluster.
Mazagon Dock, which had been the only facility to submit an Expression of Interest (EoI) for the post earlier this month, will thus become this operational centrepiece of the cluster, as per an ET Infra report.
This means its role in the proposed greenfield cluster will be more than just financial—it has already announced it is investing ₹15,000 crore in the project that has an overall investment of about ₹27,500 crore.
It will also be responsible for coordinating not just shipbuilding activities within the cluster, but also ancillary industries, MSMEs, technology partners and skilled employment for the smooth functioning of this ecosystem.
Being at the centre of the cluster also adds to its scale and visibility in a way that enables it to bring in high-volume, multi-vessel orders—not just for Indian needs, but also for the international commercial market.
The new cluster also marks Mazagon Dock's foray into commercial shipbuilding alongside its core portfolio of vessels for the defence sector.
