Hindustan Shipyard Limited

Hindustan Shipyard Limited builds and repairs ships at Gandhigram in Visakhapatnam, on India's east coast. It is a Government of India undertaking under the Ministry of Defence. The yard was founded in 1941 and launched its first ship, the 8,000 DWT steamer Jala Usha, on 14 March 1948. Its own pages give the total built since then as both 202 and 220 ships. The site covers about 300,000 square metres, laid out for a single direction of material flow. Steel processing runs from a 30,000 tonne stockyard through a plate and section treatment plant, NC gas cutting machines and heavy duty presses, with self-elevating transporters for blocks of up to 250 tonnes and prefabrication shops under overhead travelling cranes. The covered building dock takes ships of up to 80,000 DWT and is served by two 150 tonne overhead cranes and a 100 tonne level luffing crane. Three slipways handle the rest of the newbuilding work, two of them rated at 30,000 DWT and both under augmentation, as is the outfitting quay. Fitting out is done at a quay that holds two or three ships of up to 50,000 DWT with 120 tonne and 50 tonne cranes, and two wet basin arms take afloat work in 10 metres of water, the southern arm for vessels up to 50,000 DWT with a 40 tonne crane and the northern arm up to 30,000 DWT with a 20 tonne crane. Ship repair centres on a dry dock for vessels of up to 70,000 DWT with 40 tonnes of cranage, while the wet basin takes vessels of up to 80,000 DWT afloat; the docks are arranged for multiple docking. Dockside platforms are equipped for high pressure jet cleaning and semi-automatic airless spraying, grit and sand blasting runs to over 1,000 square metres a day, and the yard has a dynamic balancing facility, hydraulic self-elevating platforms and scissor lifts, separate piping, engineering and outfitting shops, and its own design department. A submarine division was set up in 1997 to take on refits of Indian Navy Foxtrot class boats, a programme the yard dates both to 1997-2005 and to 2006. The contract for the medium repair of the first EKM class boat, INS Sindhukirti, came in 2006, and the medium repair and modernisation was handed back to the Navy on 26 June 2015, having renewed close to 100 kilometres of cabling and 30 kilometres of high pressure piping and retrofitted a missile system. A normal refit of a Kilo class submarine was completed on 31 January 2020, ahead of contract date, and INS Sindhuvir has also been refitted; the covered building dock can hold two EKM boats under refit at once. Other work runs from cargo liners, tugs and inshore patrol vessels to bulk carriers up to the 53,000 DWT diamond series for Good Earth Maritime, general cargo and supply vessels and the drill ship Sagar Bhushan for ONGC. Recent deliveries include the diving support vessel INS Nistar and the inshore patrol vessel ICGS Rani Durgavati, 60 tonne bollard pull tugs are in build for Visakhapatnam Port Authority, and new facilities at slipway 4 and a welding simulator were commissioned in June 2026.