The vessel, MT Abul Kalam Azad, built for the Shipping Corporation of India (SCI), is 237 metres long, 38 metres broad and has a draft of 15.1 metres. The largest vessel ever built in the yard, the ship, named after Indian freedom fighter Maulana Azad, will be ready for delivery to the SCI well before the contracted deadline of March 1999, according to shipyard sources.

The yard is also buoyed by recent reports that the defence ministry has decided to have an aircraft carrier built by it. The sources felt the yard has the requisite facilities to deliver the carrier in six years and the exercise would help brighten the shipyard's international image.

SCIchairman and managing director P K Srivastava has hinted that the shipyard might soon get more construction orders from the corporation. The shipyard has so far built five 75,000 DWT bulk carriers and two 86,000 DWT crude oil tankers. Though the shipyard was commissioned in the early seventies, it made profits only by 1994-95. The breakthrough was attributed to capital restructuring and good performance in repair works. Even now, despite having orders for tugs and other vessels, the major part of its income comes from repairs.

In 1996-97, the yard earned a net profit of Rs 120.5 million on a turnover of over Rs 1.5 billion. Of the total turnover, over one billion rupees was from repairs. The repair turnover is still higher for 1997-98, the sources claimed.

Though the new double hull tanker's construction was formally inaugurated in October 1995 and its keel was laid in February 1996, work gathered momentum only in 1997. The delay was mainly attributed to the long time it took to re-negotiate the ship'sprice.

Till recently, it looked as if the shipyard would find it difficult to meet the deadline as its workers opposed the award of part of the ship building to sub-contractors.

The ship was built under a new system which was tried out for the first time at the shipyard. It involved the completion of a major part of the outfitting work, such as installation of machinery and piping, before the ship was floated out of the Building Dock. This helped save time compared to the old system under which the outfitting was mainly taken up after the construction of the hull was completed and the ship was floated out.

The sources said the shipyard's construction facilities were also augmented and modernised in many areas. A computerised, numerically-controlled automatic plate cutting machine was installed, putting an end to the old process of manual lifting and marking of steel sheets.

Carbon dioxide and other semi-automatic welding processes were adopted in place of manual welding. The shot blasting andpainting machines were replaced. All this helped not only in saving time but also costs.

Since a double hull tanker was being built in the country for the first time, the work involved the adoption of a new hull design by the shipyard. While all the tankers built earlier by the shipyard had single hulls, this one has two outer shells to meet a mandatory safety requirement of the International Maritime Organisation. The two shells have been provided to minimise the chances of pollution if the ship meets with an accident.