GRSE Lays Foundation for ₹2,670 Crore Shipbuilding Expansion at Raichak, Shalimar and Kidderpore, West Bengal
Defence Minister Rajnath Singh laid the foundation for five expansion projects of Garden Reach Shipbuilders & Engineers (GRSE) and Yantra India Limited (YIL) in West Bengal. The ceremony was held at GRSE Bhavan in Kolkata in the presence of West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari and senior officials from the Ministry of Defence.
GRSE will invest a total of ₹2,670 crore across three facilities. At Raichak, over ₹2,500 crore will go toward developing a shipbuilding hub with a 200-metre dry dock, capable of handling warships up to 200 metres and commercial vessels up to 60,000 DWT. At the Timber Pond facility in Shalimar, nearly ₹100 crore is earmarked for medium-sized shipbuilding and repair capacity. A third facility at Damodar, Kidderpore, will receive around ₹70 crore for medium vessel repairs and construction of electric ferries.
Separately, Yantra India Limited will invest over ₹750 crore in two new facilities at its Metal and Steel Factory in Ishapore. These include a heavy-duty forging press and a radial forging plant, intended to produce gun barrels, ammunition components and other high-end defence forgings.
The combined expansion is aimed at increasing capacity for larger and more complex warship and commercial vessel construction, as well as domestic forging capability for defence components. GRSE is a Navratna defence public sector undertaking and has built and delivered the highest number of warships among Indian shipyards.