Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders Limited (MDL), the Defence Ministry’s Navratna shipbuilder, will build a shipyard at Dugarajapatnam in Tirupati district that can turn out 1.2 million gross tonnes of merchant vessels a year. It signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on Friday (September 18, 2026) with the State’s National Shipbuilding and Heavy Industries Park-Andhra Pradesh (NSHIP-AP).

MDL will invest about ₹15,000 crore over five to seven years, and the project is expected to create about 45,000 direct and indirect jobs, the government said in a release. The MoU was signed at the Secretariat in the presence of Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu. NSHIP-AP is a special purpose vehicle owned equally by the Andhra Pradesh Maritime Board and the Visakhapatnam Port Authority.

The yard will build tankers, bulk carriers, container ships, liquefied natural gas (LNG) carriers and other large specialised vessels for both the domestic and export markets, with room to expand capacity if demand grows.

The State wants a shipbuilding-cum-port cluster at Dugarajapatnam, and a techno-economic feasibility report costs the shipbuilding and ship repair yard at ₹29,254 crore and the port at ₹9,513 crore. The Centre has approved the port and its development; the cluster comes under the Union government’s Shipbuilding Development Scheme, and NSHIP-AP has chosen MDL as its anchor shipyard. The release does not say how the yard’s cost beyond MDL’s ₹15,000 crore is to be met.

Mr. Naidu placed the project in the national target, set out in the Maritime Amrit Kaal Vision 2047, of making India one of the world’s top five shipbuilding nations by 2047. “Andhra Pradesh is committed to being at the forefront of this journey by leveraging its long coastline, strategic location and industrial ecosystem,” he said. The cluster would make the State a major shipbuilding hub and draw ancillary industries, and create jobs in shipbuilding, marine engineering, manufacturing and logistics, he said.

Captain Jagmohan (retd), Chairman and Managing Director of MDL, said Dugarajapatnam had the scale and maritime potential for a globally competitive shipyard.

The Andhra Pradesh Maritime Board will provide land and infrastructure and secure the statutory clearances the project needs, the release said.

Roads and Buildings Minister B.C. Janardhan Reddy, Andhra Pradesh Maritime Board Chairman Damacharla Satya, Visakhapatnam Port Authority Chairperson Jasmeet Singh Bindra and senior officials were present.

With inputs from PTI