Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari virtually launch five ₹3,500 crore defence expansion projects in Bengal.
KOLKATA: Union Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari jointly conducted a virtual Bhumi Pujan on August 23 to launch five brownfield expansion projects worth approximately ₹3,500 crore, with ground operations beginning simultaneously at Kidderpore, Shalimar, Raichak and Ishapore. The projects are split between two Defence Public Sector Undertakings, Garden Reach Shipbuilders & Engineers (GRSE) and Yantra India Limited (YIL) and together mark one of the more substantial capital deployments in West Bengal’s defence-industrial sector in recent years.
Three of the projects fall under GRSE and focus on warship and commercial shipbuilding capacity along the Hooghly. The remaining two belong to YIL and target heavy metallurgical forging at the Metal and Steel Factory in Ishapore.
Solving the Hooghly’s Depth Problem
The centrepiece of the package is GRSE’s Raichak facility in South 24-Parganas, carrying an outlay exceeding ₹2,500 crore, the largest single commitment among the five. GRSE has secured a 32-acre riverside site on long-term lease from Syama Prasad Mookerjee Port, Kolkata, offering a 356-metre waterfront and, crucially, a natural draught of 8 to 10 metres. This addresses a long-standing constraint for GRSE’s traditional yards further upstream in Kolkata, where shallow river depth has limited construction of vessels displacing more than 5,000 tonnes. The new site will house a 200-metre dry dock, a matching slipway and launching pad, enabling GRSE to build warships up to 200 metres long and commercial vessels up to 60,000 DWT, placing it in Supramax class territory for the first time.
Reviving Dormant Yards
Two smaller GRSE projects focus on rejuvenation rather than expansion into new capability classes. At Shalimar in Howrah, a ₹100 crore investment will restore a dormant Timber Pond facility, rebuilding its 130-metre dry dock, installing a new dock gate and gantry crane and adding a 120-metre slipway to support medium-sized warship construction and refits. At Kidderpore Docks in Kolkata, a more modest ₹70 crore project revives a small dormant yard for repairing medium inland and coastal vessels, alongside dedicated lines for zero-emission electric ferries and small craft. Both sites sit on land leased from the port authority, effectively bringing idle public infrastructure back into productive use.
Modernising Heavy Forging at Ishapore
At YIL’s Metal and Steel Factory in Ishapore, the investment shifts from shipbuilding to upstream metallurgy. A new 3,000-tonne hydraulic open-die forging press will replace a press that has been in continuous service since 1976, enabling high-precision forging of artillery gun barrels and heavy ammunition components with automated rail-bound manipulators and Industry 4.0 controls. The project, carrying a 26-month execution timeline, is projected to generate annual savings of ₹25.58 crore and support ₹500 crore in annual turnover, though its 7.3% internal rate of return and 11-year payback period reflect the long horizons typical of heavy industrial retooling.
Alongside it, a ₹473.84 crore Radial Forging Plant will add precision forging capability for super alloys, hollow tubes for aerial bombs, high-strength railway axles and nuclear reactor components. With a 30-month timeline, this plant carries stronger projected returns, an annual profit of roughly ₹69 crore, a 10.58% IRR and a six-year payback period.
Why It Matters for Aatmanirbhar Bharat
The two sets of projects are complementary rather than parallel. GRSE, a Navratna shipyard that delivered India’s first indigenously built warship in 1961 and has since built over 800 platforms, currently carries an order book of ₹18,482 crore and is the lowest bidder on the Navy’s Next Generation Corvettes programme. Expanded capacity at Raichak positions the yard to absorb both that potential order and rising international commercial demand, feeding into what the sector describes as a global capacity crunch even as established shipyards abroad remain congested. YIL’s forging upgrades, meanwhile, address a quieter but equally important link in the chain: the domestic supply of specialised alloy steel and forgings that downstream platforms, including GRSE’s Next Generation Offshore Patrol Vessels with over 80% indigenous content, depend on.
What Remains Unscheduled
Not every detail has been made public. While YIL’s two forging projects carry firm 26 and 30-month completion windows, GRSE has not disclosed specific timelines for Raichak, Shalimar or Damodar. Maintaining Raichak’s natural draught will require ongoing dredging to manage silt in the estuary and the site will need Coastal Regulation Zone clearances before construction can proceed at full pace. Precise direct employment figures also remain undisclosed beyond general references to job creation, leaving actual hiring numbers to emerge as the facilities near commissioning.
Looking Ahead
The success of this expansion will ultimately be measured less by ground-breaking ceremonies than by execution. For GRSE, that means converting its competitive position on naval contracts like the corvette programme into signed orders and expanding beyond its existing export deal with Germany’s Carsten Rehder. For YIL, it means securing sustained procurement from defence, railway and nuclear agencies to justify the forging capacity now being built. Both threads, shipbuilding and metallurgy, are aimed at the same broader goal: reducing India’s reliance on imported vessels and specialised steel forgings across its defence and infrastructure supply chains.
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