GRSE to float JV with French, Indian partners

The Garden Reach Shipbuilders and Engineers (GRSE) is all set to float a joint venture with French naval shipbuilder, DCNS, and an Indian IT partner that will provide shipbuilding design services.

"The joint venture will start a design bureau in Kolkata with a headcount of 70 to 80 people that could go up to 200 as business develops. The JV will start operations from June this year", informed K C Shekhar, chiarman and managing director, GRSE. He did not want to divulge deatails on the shareholding pattern of the JV, but said that each partner would have less than 50 per cent stake. The newly floated JV will not be a subsidiary of GRSE, Shekhar clarified.

"We are interested in forming a design joint venture as the GRSE design office is not equipped to cater to the requirements of the yard", he said on the sidelines of a Bengal National Chamber of Commerce and Industry meet.

GRSE currently has an order book of around Rs7,500 crore and it is expecting to secure additional orders worth Rs 700 core this fiscal. Of the present order-book, around Rs 300 crore was placed by the Indian navy while the rest was for fast attack crafts (FACs), landing tanks placed by foreign companies.

The yard is also targeting to increase its steel fabrication throughput to 150 tonnes per month(tpm) from a 90-95 tpm now. "Our steel throughput has increased substantially over the last few months.It was around 45 tpm six months back", Shekhar said.