The core strength of Dredging Corporation of India Limited (DCIL) has been maintenance dredging, and in the next couple of years, we will be focussing on gaining more control in this segment, said Managing Director and CEO of the company G.Y.V. Victor.
He was speaking to The Hindu on the occasion of the 45th formation day of the organisation, on Monday.
According to him, DCIL has been a market leader in the maintenance segment of dredging for the last 45 years and has already achieved a turnover of around ₹800 crore in the 2020-21 fiscal.
“This year, we already have orders for ₹830 crore and projects worth another ₹100 crore are expected. The total work in this segment in India is around ₹1,200 crore and we intend to scale up our orders to at least ₹1,000 crore in the next couple of years,” said Dr. Victor, an industry veteran who took over as MD and CEO of DCIL a month ago.
DCIL already has maintenance contracts of about 10 major ports and around four minor ports. “Apart from taking up maintenance dredging for the ports, we intend to act as holistic solution providers, as the Ministry of Shipping intends to increase the depth of all the ports to 16.5 m,” he said.
This apart, he said that the company would also focus on capital dredging.
“With the Sagarmala project and three ports being earmarked for Andhra Pradesh such as Ramayapatnam, Dugarajapatnam and Bhavanapadu, we have hopes of making it big in capital dredging. All the three ports are greenfield ports and they need to be constructed from scratch, which includes large-scale capital dredging and providing solutions. We are negotiating both with the Centre and the State Governments for considering us,” he said.
DCIL already has 14 dredgers, including 10 trailing suction hopper dredgers, two cutter suction dredgers, one backhoe dredger and one inland dredger.
“We are augmenting our existing dredgers, especially the trailing suction hoppers, to handle capital dredging and have placed an order with Cochin Shipyard for a new one. With augmentation of the existing fleet, we will be a major player in the capital dredging segment and we intend to increase our share both in the domestic and international market,” said Dr. Victor.
“On the international front, we intend to first target the market in the sub-continent, such as Bangladesh and Sri Lanka and then move to the Middle East. We already have a bilateral trade agreement with Bangladesh and a number of projects are coming up in that country. We are hoping for some breakthrough,” he said.
DCIL, which was earlier a PSU, is now owned by a consortium of four major ports — Visakhapatnam, Paradip, JNPT and Deendayal. While VPT has 19% share, other three ports have an 18% share each.
On the vision for the next five years, Dr. Victor said that the goal would be to become the most preferred contractor and once again become a cash-rich company, as it was earlier.
On the occasion of the formation day, Mansukh Mandaviya, Minister of State for Ports, Shipping and Waterways, in a message, expressed confidence that DCIL will soon emerge as a global giant in the field of green and sustainable dredging for Atma Nirbhar Bharat.
On the occasion, a cultural programme was organised by children of the employees at the corporate office.
Source : The Hindu
