40% of ‘India’s largest, most advanced dredger’ completed at Cochin Shipyard

India's largest dredger, DCI Dredge Godavari, nearing completion at CSL, set for launch in July 2025.

About 40% of ‘DCI Dredge Godavari’, said to be India’s largest dredger, has been completed at Cochin Shipyard Limited (CSL), sources from the Visakhapatnam-headquartered Dredging Corporation of India Limited (DCI) said on Sunday (May 18). The keel of the vessel, being built in collaboration with Royal IHC, the Netherlands, was laid in September 2024.

As per the provisional schedule, CSL is likely to launch the vessel on July 20. This means that it will now start making the vessel ready for trial by installing the needed machinery. Once this is completed, the vessel will be ready for delivery to the owner (DCI-Visakhapatnam) for its operations. Once commissioned, the dredger would be the most technologically advanced dredger ever built in India.

Built for DCI, this Trailing Suction Hopper Dredger (TSHD), with a hopper capacity of 12,000 cubic metres, is a major initiative under the Government of India’s ‘Aatmanirbhar Bharat’ initiative, thereby increasing the capacities of all major ports in India as envisaged under the Maritime India Vision (MIV-2030).

TSHD is a self-propelled ship designed to dredge materials from the seabed while sailing. It utilises a trailing suction pipe with a drag-head at the end to suck up material and transport it in a hopper. TSHDs are versatile and used for various projects like deepening waterways, land reclamation and port construction.

“About 40% of the construction work has been completed at the CSL-Kochi. The provisional commissioning of the vessel [will be done on] July 20, 2025. We expect the vessel to be handed over to us by December 2025 or January 2026. The cost of the vessel is around ₹950 crore,” a DCI official told The Hindu on condition of anonymity.

The DCI Dredge Godavari will be a prestigious asset of the country and an important milestone in India’s maritime capabilities, the official added.

The keel for DCI Dredge Godavari was laid virtually by Union Minister for Ports, Shipping and Waterways Sarbananda Sonowal in 2024. The event was also attended virtually by a team of Royal IHC of the Netherlands, a world leader in dredger design and construction, which provided design and technical support.