[indartwm]

On war footing

Reaching Garden Reach Shipbuilders & Engineers Ltd can be daunting. As you cross the Kidderpore docks, the grey metalled road vanishes into a dusty, uneven motorway with a maze of trailers, heavy duty trucks and speeding autorickshaws vying for space. The long bumpy ride terminates when you reach the end of the city limits at Metiabruz which houses the main gate of the 125-year-old shipyard of Kolkata.


The huge shipyard with two dry docks for ships up to 26,000 metric tons, one fully covered wet basin, four slipways, a sprawling building berth, four workshops, two river jetties and a state-of-the-art fitting out jetty (FOJ) unit was originally a tiny workshop on the eastern bank of Hooghly for repairing British ships in 1884. It was christened “Garden Reach” as it came up on what was once a garden located on the interlocking spur of the Ganges which is also referred as “reach”, informs Saikat Chattopadhyay, the company PRO.

Taken over by the Ministry of Defence in 1960, Garden Reach Workshop (as it was then called) produced India’s first indigenously built warship, INS Ajay, in 1961. Today, as one of the leading defence shipyards of India with an operative strength of about 4,500, GRSE has manufactured more than 700 ships including a range of missile corvettes, landing ship tanks, fleet replenishment tankers, fast attack crafts, hovercrafts and other maritime units. GRSE has altogether seven units in Kolkata and one in Ranchi where engines are assembled.


Once inside the gate, I come across a huge hull block ready to be lowered into the dry dock “3020” through a 40T giant crane moving on a rail. This is the hull of one of the four Anti-Submarine Warfare corvettes that is currently being built at GRSE. Each of the hull blocks (weighing about 40 T) lowered in the dry dock are welded one after another to build a 3,000 T ship. Water is then allowed to enter the dock for the ship to float out towards the fitting out jetty unit (FOJU) in Kidderpore where the deck machinery fittings are done. It takes four years to build a standard warship and two years for smaller vessels .


I stroll past the dry deck to the adjacent production shop which is buzzing with activity. Hundreds of workers clad in overalls are busy in plate sizing, cutting and welding to prepare the hull blocks even as others appear to be hurrying out, momentarily bowing at the small temple on the side. The sound of the drill machines and the iron cutters is deafening. But not to the workers. Mohammad Riyazuddin who has spent 35 years in the shipyard admits he is partly deaf. “But it sure swells my chest to say I work at one of the biggest shipyard of the country,” he says.


The sound of a shrieking siren interrupts our chat and I look up to catch a huge aerial crane going overhead. “That is our Goliath crane which moves the hull blocks across the shed,” explains Riyazuddin.


The cool confines of the CMD’s office offer a welcome relief from the scorching sun and the workshop sound. The shipyard is currently working on 19 ships on order, including frigates, four ASW corvettes and specialised vessels for the Indian Navy and Coast Guard, informs CMD Rear Admiral A K Verma. “We got our first export order for an offshore Patrol Vessel (OPV) for the Government of Mauritius,” says Admiral Verma. A mechanical engineer, Verma has over 30 years of experience in maintenance of ships and aircraft while serving the Navy.


The ongoing Rs 600-crore modernisation plan which will wrap up this year is expected to double the current capacity of the shipyard. After modernisation, GRSE will have two more dry docks, a 250 T Goliath crane and a modular workshop. “It is basically a two-fold capacity increase,” says the CMD, “While the crane will reduce the dock occupancy time, two additional dry docks will lead to faster production.”


GRSE is probably the only defence shipyard in the country which also has its own engineering and engine manufacturing division. The bailey or portable bridges used over river channels, high terrain and border areas by the army are a product of their engineering division. “We have also developed ship specific equipment where the original equipment manufacturing is not available in our country,” says Verma.


A majority of the indigenous warships at the President's Naval Fleet Review recently happened to have been rolled out of the Garden Reach Shipyard. As he excuses himself for a technical meeting, he sums up the scenario: “Going by the order book of the company, we are poised to convert GRSE into one of the biggest shipyards not just in this country but in this part of the world.”