The Hindustan Shipyard Limited (HSL), the oldest public sector shipyard in the country, which has been suffering perennial losses till 2016, is now poised to leapfrog to a new platform to become a leading ship and submarine building PSU, said its Chairman and Managing Director Rear Admiral L.V. Sarat Babu.
He will be superannuating this month-end.
In an interview with The Hindu, he said that in the next couple of years, the turnover that is currently around ₹560 crore is set to rise over ₹1,000 crore.
“This has been our target since long and it will now be possible by bagging the ₹10,000 crore contract for building five naval fleet support ships. The contract has been finalised and given to us and we have already signed the agreement with our Turkish strategic partners. The work is likely to begin by mid next year. Each ship will be have a displacement of about 45,000 tonnes. This apart, we have already bagged the contract for medium refit and life certification for one Sindhughosh class submarine, valued at around ₹1,,000 crore,” said the outgoing CMD.
According to him, the HSL is now self-sufficient, has built assets, has a state-of-the-art design department, adequate skilled workforce, and is poised to take up orders for more complex ships and submarines.
“We are already building a very complex ship under project VC 11184. It is a state-of-the-art surveillance ship with all forms of complexity and it gives us the reputation and capability to go for building stealth vessels. And days are not far, when we will compete to build submarines and aircraft carriers in collaboration with strategic partners. We are already under consideration for Project 75I submarine project, as building submarines is no longer a competency issue for us after the successful MRLC of subs,” said the Rear Admiral.
Mission accomplished
The growth of HSL has not been easy. In 2016, when Sarat Babu took over, the accumulated losses were around ₹1,350 crore and negative net worth was over ₹1,000 crore. “We were making losses, our properties were attached and there were huge legacy liabilities of pending orders. Our goal for 2016 was to make at least ₹1 profit, but we ended up with a profit of ₹19 crore. And from there we never looked back. The mindset of the manpower was changed and the team was motivated to do better and since then we have not only been recording profits each year, but also cleared all our legacy liabilities and sticking to delivery schedules. This has brought us ranking, reputation and revenue, our three pillars of success. We delivered over 15 vessels and now poised for a higher trajectory,” he said.
On the recent crane mishap in which 10 persons died, he said that an inquiry was on and appropriate action would be initiated.