Consultancy Pvt News

Lloyd’s Register has acquired the business and principal assets of the Mumbai-based nuclear risk specialists, Reltech Consulting (Reltech), in a move designed to further strengthen its historic presence in the Indian energy sector. The business and assets of Reltech, which provides safety-management services to a multinational civil nuclear client base, have been transferred to the newly formed LR Scandpower Risk Consultancy Pvt. Ltd., completing another major step in the strategic expansion of Lloyd’s Register’s global nuclear business. Scandpower AS, which provides independent technical risk services to the energy and transport industries, was purchased by Lloyd’s Register in 2009.

India’s largest engineering and construction firm Larsen & Toubro Ltd. (L&T) is negotiating with global shipping fleet owners to build ships worth over $1b, but the company cannot finalize these orders because it still hasn’t received the requisite clearances for its shipyard from a local government. L&T plans to set up the country’s biggest shipbuilding facility at Kattupalli in Tamil Nadu in an effort to tap growing domestic and global demand for ships. The company will invest around Rs3,000 crore in the shipyard and port project and will build cargo ships, warships and offshore oil rigs. The shipyard at Kattupalli will be capable of building 25 big ships in a year and repair another 50-60 ships.

Gujarat, India’s top maritime state by cargo handled at state-owned ports, is finalizing a shipbuilding policy that has set an ambitious target to grab more than half of the country’s shipbuilding market by 2020, an official at the western state’s maritime regulator said. The state will be the first in the country to have a separate policy on shipbuilding. A draft policy prepared by the government seeks to extend tax holidays to shipbuilding projects for five years. Such projects will also be entitled to the same fiscal and duty benefits as those granted to so-called special economic zone (SEZ) projects of the Union government, said G.R. Jadega, technical adviser to the Gujarat Maritime Board.

Indian firms are increasingly getting into ship building and repairing as shipbuilding orders are expected to rise significantly to meet the boom in seaborne trade and increased offshore oil exploration. The local industry is expected to expand to $20b by 2020 from close to $5b now, a report by maritime consultants i-maritime Consultancy Pvt Ltd said, which is about 1 percent by value of total global shipbuilding orders. Besides subsidies given by the Indian government to local shipbuilders, which is a big incentive, a major part of the world shipping fleet is very old and due for replacement, Chief Financial Officer Dhananjay Datar of ABG Shipyard said.