HD Hyundai Heavy Industries, the shipbuilding subsidiary of HD Hyundai, will collaborate with India’s largest shipyard, Cochin Shipyard, to jointly participate in the Indian Navy’s Landing Platform Dock (LPD) project.
HD Hyundai Heavy Industries announced on November 11 that it has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Cochin Shipyard to jointly advance the Indian Navy’s Landing Ship project. This agreement represents a concrete collaborative initiative by both parties to jointly undertake the Indian Navy’s Landing Ship project.
Under the agreement, HD Hyundai Heavy Industries will enhance its involvement in Indian naval projects by focusing on landing ship design and technical support. Building on this foundation. The company will formally enter India’s specialized ship market, with particular emphasis on strengthening its competitiveness through landing ship design and technical support.
As early as July this year, HD Korea Shipbuilding & Offshore Engineering (HD KSOE), the intermediate holding company for HD Hyundai Group’s shipbuilding business, signed a comprehensive agreement with Cochin Shipyard for “long-term cooperation in shipbuilding.” The agreement outlines plans to provide comprehensive support to Cochin Shipyard in areas including design and procurement, production efficiency enhancement, technical collaboration and talent development, with the aim of elevating the latter’s shipbuilding capabilities and standards.
Leveraging its technical expertise and joint development experience gained from supplying naval ships to countries such as the Philippines and Peru, HD Hyundai Heavy Industries has progressively established local partnerships and a technology transfer system. The company plans to expand its participation in Indian naval and defense projects through this collaboration.
It is reported that the strengthened collaboration between HD Hyundai and Cochin Shipyard stems from the group’s gradual elevation of its special ship business to a core corporate function. Should the merger between HD Hyundai Heavy Industries and HD Hyundai Mipo be completed on the 1st of next month, two of the four dry docks owned by HD Hyundai Mipo will be dedicated exclusively to special ship construction. HD Hyundai Heavy Industries’ specialized shipbuilding technology and global network will be integrated with HD Hyundai Mipo’s operational base, with expectations that specialized ship manufacturing capabilities will be further enhanced.
Industry insiders in South Korea generally believe that this foray into the Indian market will further strengthen HD Hyundai’s order momentum for special ships. In the third quarter of this year, special ships accounted for 13.8% of HD Hyundai Heavy Industries’ revenue, more than double that of the same period last year (6.6%).
The addition of HD Hyundai Heavy Industries will further deepen the collaboration between HD Hyundai Group and Cochin Shipyard. An HD Hyundai Heavy Industries representative stated, “HD Hyundai Heavy Industries is the most suitable partner for the Indian Navy’s modernization process. This collaboration will serve as a turning point for entering the Indian naval ship market.”
According to available information, Cochin Shipyard, located in Kerala, southern India, boasts the capability to design, build, and repair various ship types, from merchant ships to aircraft carriers. In the past five years, Cochin Shipyard has delivered a total of 70 ships, including 60 small merchant ships and 10 naval ships. As India’s largest shipbuilding and repair base, Cochin Shipyard’s new dry dock and international ship repair center were completed on January 17, 2024.
With increasing global orders for submarines and warships, South Korean shipbuilders are gradually expanding from merchant ships into the field of specialized ships. Meanwhile, India, the other party in this collaboration, is also advancing its military modernization program “TPCR 2025 (Technology Prospects and Capability Roadmap 2025),” which is reportedly set to announce several large-scale projects, including landing ships and destroyers.