Alevoor Dinesh Kini/ENS

Udupi, Apr 17: The first-ever Multi-purpose Supply Vessel (MPSV) built in Malpe Port of Karnataka Coast for an offshore company will set sail in Arabian sea by June this year.

Tebma Shipyards Limited, a Chennai-based public Limited company, is simultaneously building two MPSVs for a Norwegian shipping company at their biggest facility in the Malpe Port.

In addition, two more 40-tonne broad pulled tugs, used to pull the containers from vessels, built for Cochin Port Trust, are also nearing completion. Each MPSV costs not less than Rs 80 crore and a tug costs around Rs 30 crore.

Director (Technical) of Tebma B Jayakumar told this website’s newspaper that two tugs and MPSVs would be launched in June, after completing remaining 15 per cent work.

He said their industry attracts lots of ancillary industries like steel and pipe fabrication factories. It would support local logistic providers and transport agencies.

So far, they had got as many as 250 containers of engines and parts, steel plates etc, through New Mangalore Port. The company had bought land in Hangarakatta to start a pre-fabrication processing plant.

Once that unit gets completed, only assembling works would be done at the Malpe yard. “We plan to make this a clean, modern yard to match it with the European standards,” Jayakumar added.

Senior Vice-President of Tebma, K Karunakar Gambhir, said that as a corporate social responsibility, Tebma had planned to build a separate slipway for the benefit of local fishermen, as soon as the Department of Port and Fisheries hand over the land, which is already identified on the premises of Malpe Port.

Earlier, a group of fishermen organisations had protested against Tebma and demanded the company’s ouster for not fulfilling their assurance of constructing a slipway for the use of fishing boats. They had even accused the company of using fisheries land and carrying out anti-fishermen activities.

Tebma, originally started by a group of five marine engineers, 25 years ago, has ship building facilities at Kochi, where it works under a joint venture agreement with Cochin Shipyard and also small vessels and survey launcher building factory in Chennai.

Its product line includes building fishing trawlers, small boats, dredgers, barges and medium vessels.

Most of all ship building companies in India are flooded with orders from abroad, to build vessels to be used for extracting crude petroleum oil, especially from the European and Russian coast.