Article Posted on : - Sep 30, 2009

L&T shipbuilding facilities in Hazira and Kattupalli have the capability to take up construction of vessels of about 7,000 to 9,000 tonnage.

NEW DELHI (PTI): Larsen & Toubro, a private infrastructure development company, has said it will bid for building Navy's second line of conventional submarines, recalling that it had almost won the contract for Amur-class vessels that never took off.

L&T's Chairman and Managing Director A M Naik told reporters here Tuesday that its shipbuilding facilities in Hazira in Gujarat and Kattupalli near Chennai in Tamil Nadu had capacities to take up construction of all types of warships, including submarines.

"Our shipyards in Hazira and Kattupalli have the capability to take up construction of vessels of about 7,000 to 9,000 tonnage and even warships of the size three or four times these vessels," Naik said.

"We are bidding for the Navy's second line of submarines. We would like to recall that we were the chosen ones for the Amur-class submarines, which did not fructify," Naik said on the sidelines of a seminar on peaceful use of nuclear energy here.

The company's senior executive vice president M V Kotwal said the Hazira shipyard's production capability could be stepped up once the Navy's orders were received and its Kattupalli shipyard over a 900-acre area would come up soon to augment its production capacities.