Cochin Shipyard Limited

Cochin Shipyard was incorporated in 1972 and began production a decade later as India's first greenfield yard of any real scale. It sits at Kochi in Kerala, reports to the Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways, holds Miniratna status and has traded on the Indian exchanges since its 2017 listing. The yard can build hulls up to about 110,000 deadweight tonnes and repair ships up to 125,000, which is why it remains the only Indian builder to have completed an aircraft carrier. INS Vikrant, commissioned in September 2022, came out of these docks after two decades of work. A new large dry dock opened at the main yard in January 2024, which lifted the ceiling on what the company can build and repair at the same time.

Naval construction now dominates the shipbuilding order book. The yard is delivering eight Mahe class anti-submarine warfare shallow water craft, the first commissioned in late 2025, and has cut steel on six Next Generation Missile Vessels under a contract worth roughly 9,804 crore rupees. Commercial work is unusually green. Twenty three battery electric hybrid ferries went to the Kochi Water Metro, India's first hydrogen fuel cell passenger catamaran was inaugurated in 2024, autonomous electric freight barges were delivered to ASKO of Norway, hydrogen powered container feeders are on order for Samskip, and electric tugs for the national Green Tug Transition Programme are being built with power and propulsion from ABB. Bulk carriers, platform supply vessels, tankers and service operation vessels for offshore wind round out the commercial list. Green tonnage has turned into a genuine export line rather than a demonstration programme, and the Norwegian and Dutch orders were won against European yards.

Ship repair has run since 1982 and is now spread across several sites. A new International Ship Repair Facility on Willingdon Island, fitted with a ship lift and six work stations, started operating in 2024, and the company also runs repair units at Mumbai Port, at Kolkata and at Port Blair in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Two wholly owned subsidiaries extend the footprint. Udupi Cochin Shipyard in Karnataka builds dry cargo vessels for Wilson of Norway, and Hooghly Cochin Shipyard at Howrah revived a two century old West Bengal facility for inland and coastal craft. Both were bought rather than built from scratch, a cheaper route into new geographies than a greenfield slipway. Management has said it wants Kochi to work as a regional repair hub rather than a domestic one. Away from steel, the marine engineering training institute runs a graduate mechanical engineer course for the merchant fleet, a testing laboratory sells materials and calibration services, and a startup support policy funds maritime technology ventures. The order book stood near 21,100 crore rupees in early 2026, about two thirds of it Indian Navy work, and the company has been in talks with HD Hyundai about a block fabrication joint venture.