Indian billionaire and chairman of the Adani Group, Gautam Adani, is reportedly mulling entering the shipbuilding business at the company’s port at Mundra.
According to local media, Adani’s shipbuilding scheme is part of the $5.4bn expansion plan for Mundra Port which has recently received environmental and coastal regulation zone clearance. No specifics of the yard facilities or a timeframe for its completion have been revealed.
The main reasons for this move are that top shipbuilding nations such as China, Japan, and South Korea are mostly booked until 2028 and that India has set a goal to become a top 10 shipbuilder by 2030 and a top five one in by 2047. Currently, the country is nowhere close as it is ranked 20th with a market share of only 0.05%.
The potential new entry by Adani into shipbuilding follows a swathe of other recent yard announcements such as defence contractors foraying into commercial shipbuilding, and new yard capacity opening up on both the east and west coast of the world’s most populous nation.
KPMG said that to reach the 2030 goal, the annual output of Indian shipyards needs to be increased from 0.072m gt to 0.33m gt by 2030 and to 11.31m gt a year by 2047.
The government of Narendra Modi is set to announce a new yard stimulus plan in the coming weeks. The funds for the maritime industry could be in place as soon as the end of the year and some government sources claimed that the initial funds would involve a $3bn fund spread over seven years.