Shipbuilding top priority for us: Modi at Hyundai shipyard

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on a visit to the Hyundai Heavy Industries Shipyard at Ulsan, said that shipbuilding is a "top priority" for India.

Modi, who arrived at Ulsan from Seoul, met top officials of Hyundai Shipyard, one of the biggest ship construction companies in the world.

"Shipbuilding is a top priority for us." PM @narendramodi tells Kil Seon Choi Chairman of Hyundai Heavy Industries," external affairs ministry spokesperson Vikas Swarup tweeted.

"And wrapping up with a site visit to one of the largest shipyards in the world. PM at HHI's Ulsan facility," he tweeted.

"At the forefront of maritime engineering. PM visits Hyundai Heavy Industries Headquarters in Ulsan," he said. Modi also met members of the Indian community at Hyundai Heavy Industries Shipyard.

On Monday, Modi invited South Korean investment in areas like ship building, including LNG tankers. Both countries are to set up a Joint Working Group on shipbuilding.

Hyundai Heavy Industries (HHI) is one of the biggest ship construction companies in the world. Its ship manufacturing facility in Ulsan, a South Korean city located on the south-eastern tip of the Korean Peninsula, is the largest shipyard in the world.

The shipyard extends across two and a half miles along the coast of Mipo Bay in Ulsan and covers an area of 1,780 acres. Due to its strategic location, the shipyard can be easily accessed from the open sea.

Construction of the Ulsan shipyard commenced in 1972 and it was commissioned in 1974. Meanwhile, HHI also christened two very large crude carriers (VLCC), each of 260,000DWT.

Construction of the ships as well as the shipyard was carried out simultaneously. The shipyard reached a 20 million DWT production milestone in 1988 and 50 million DWT in 1997. It achieved an aggregate production mark of 100 million DWT in 2005.

From 1972 to 2013, HHI has delivered 2,981 vessels to 268 shipowners in 48 countries. It commands around 16 percent of the world ship manufacturing market, according to ship technology.com.

Ulsan shipyard has ten large-scale dry docks with nine Goliath cranes. This allows HHI to manufacture any type of ship of any size.

HHI has an H-Dock, again the world's first dry dock for building offshore vessels. The H-dock measures 490m long, 115m wide and 13.5m high.

The deep dock has a capacity of 1m DWT. HHI also developed an automatic painting spray head for painting the bottom of ships in September 2014.

In the morning, Modi addressed the 6th Asian Leadership Forum and the India-ROK CEOs Forum, and also interacted with the CEOs of top South Korean companies.