Sri Lanka dockyard chases new navy and civil jobs

Oct 10, 2007 (LBO) – Sri Lanka's Colombo Dockyard, the island's sole listed ship builder, is bidding for three new local ship building contracts, including one from the navy where it has tied up with a Croatian yard, officials said. The yard, a subsidiary of Japan's Onomichi Dockyard Co. which provides management and technical expertise, said its repair business is doing well and that it is in talks with an Indian client for more vessels.

"The ship repair business is doing extremely well at the moment," Colombo Dockyard Ltd. chief executive Mangala Yapa told LBO.

"In ship building, we're on schedule to deliver the first anchor handling tug to India's Greatship by mid-December 2007 and to launch the second vessel this month. So this year ship building should give a reasonable return."

The yard is in talks with Greatship on building more advanced vessels for the company's offshore oil industry support services business.

The newest tender Dockyard is bidding for is a research vessel for the ministry of fisheries and aquatic resources.

The second tender is to build a tug boat for the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation to be used at its offshore mooring buoy into which tankers unload crude oil.

Colombo Dockyard