having witnessed a downturn in revenue and decline in orders during the last few years the hindustan shipyard limited hsl is now rearing to get back into the forefront of ship and submarine building for defence establishments having delivered submarine ins sindhukirti after retrofit to the indian navy hsl has now set its sights on building submarines and warships for the indian navy scripting the turnaround for one of oldest yards in the country is chairman and managing director of hsl rear admiral nk mishra retd in a chat with manish of toi nk mishra discusses the changes taking place at hsl and the shipyards plan for a total revival cyclone hudhud caused extensive damage throughout the city last year has hsl recovered from hudhuds assault today the yard is functioning like any other in an efficient manner the proof is two things that happened at the yard one is of course the retrofit of ins sindhukirti we planned ahead got gensets and cutting machines for trees so we started work the day after hudhud second is the quality of work at hsl sindhukirti went to sea for the first time there were no defects and second time went for the test dive and went directly to naval dockyard without any problems sindhukirti is now the most potent operational submarine in the navy cyclone hudhud was a blessing in disguise for hsl it sharpened my resolve to do up the shipyard and we have spend around rs 70 crore on repairs of roofs and roads and spent additional funds on new machinery what is hsls financial condition what projects you are planning to be involved with our finances continue to be poor based on this we were afraid that project 75 i would be denied so i decided to form a consortium with bhel and midhani both psus as there is no risk involved and we are jointly bidding for building submarines navy had apprehensions initially but today we are in the race and shortlisted for building submarines we have also been nominated for minisubmarines or midget submarines and going by our market survey koreans will be very serious contenders for that project so in january 2014 we went for an mou with hyundai heavy industries and subsequently the pm visited korea and leveraged this mou through the indian embassy there it will be a governmenttogovernment understanding and once that happens it will be very good partnership for us the koreans have also stated that they will be happy if five fleet support ships are given to hsl and they will help build it here and turn around the yard so there is serious talk of nomination of five fleet support ships for hsl and if all these materialize our order book will cross rs 20000 crore in the next couple of years as of now our order book is around rs 1400 crore what is new infrastructure being set up at hsl as far as the organisation is concerned