Question

Passenger and Merchant ships are built at ________________.
A. Mazgaon Docks
B. Hindustan Shipyard at Visakhapatnam
C. No place; the Indian docks only make navy ships
D. Goa shipyard

Answer 1

Hint:India had a flourishing shipbuilding industry during ancient times but the conquest of Central Asian rulers and later, colonization of India by the British devastated this industry.

Complete answer: The shipbuilding capacity of a unit is defined in terms of the maximum carrying capacity of the ship that can be built by the shipyard measured in terms of deadweight tonnage (DWT) which is the number of tons of stored fuel and cargo that a ship can carry. There were only a few shipbuilding facilities left after the independence but they could only launch only very small vessels. Till now only naval ships are being built in India and public sector companies were mainly assigned to do the shipbuilding. The top 3 among these are Cochin shipyard limited (1,10,000 DWT), Hindustan Shipyard Limited- Visakhapatnam (80,000 DWT), and Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders Limited- Mumbai (40,000 DWT). In recent times many private companies have spun up that work in the field of shipbuilding and naval architecture. Reliance Naval & Engineering Limited (RENL) is a private company which has the maximum shipbuilding capacity in India of 4,00,000 DWT. But they haven’t built any merchant or passenger vessels till now.

Thus, option (C) is correct.

Note: Shipbuilding is a very cost-competitive market and the Indian shipbuilding ecosystem has not matured enough. Major shipbuilding hubs are in East Asia such as China and South Korea. The fastest and cheapest shipbuilding is done in China. Hyundai Heavy Industries in the South Korean city of Ulsan is the biggest shipyard in the world.