L&T's shipbuilding arm ties up with US firms for design, equipment supply

Company will build vessels for defence near Chennai; it is currently supplying 54 interceptor boats for Coast Guard

Larsen & Toubro is looking at joining hands with US majors for designing and equipment suppliers to design and build future shipbuilding contracts. The vessels will be built at a facility near Chennai.

Speaking at the Indo-US Partnership Conclave 'The march towards $500 billion trade', organised by IACC along with the state ofTamil Nadu, B Kannan, CEO & MD, L&T Shipbuilding said the company is in touch with some US-based firms, for its future projects.

For ship design it has tied up with Alion, for ship equipments the company will procure Low Frequency Sonar from Harris Group, hull mounted sonar from Raytheon, AUVs from Bluefin Robotics Corporation, data acquistion system from Seabotix Inc, data acquistion from Teledyne and aircraft elevators for ships from Pan Marine.

The ship building facility of L&T is located at Kattupalli, around 40 km from Chennai.

The company is currently engaged in two major defence programmes. It is supplying 54 interceptor boats for the Indian Coast Guard, of which 20 have already been delivered and rest is expected to be supplied in a year's time.

It is building offshore patrol vessels to the Indian Coast Guard. A floating deck for Indian Navy, to be positioned near Andaman Nicobar Islands is also under development and will be delivered next year, he said.

Besides, it is also designing a landing platform dock to carry helicopters, whoch would be helpful for rescue and emergency operations. The company is expecting to bag a contract from the Indian Navy on this, he added.

The company has an order book of close to Rs 2,000 crore, he said.