Marine engineering near Kochi

Kochi runs the largest shipbuilding and repair yard in India. Cochin Shipyard Limited, incorporated in 1972 and operating since 1982, builds to 110,000 deadweight tonnes and repairs to 125,000, and commissioned a new 310 metre dry dock in January 2024 capable of taking a 300 metre ship. It built INS Vikrant, commissioned in September 2022, the only aircraft carrier ever built in an Indian yard, and refitted INS Vikramaditya in 2016, with a further short refit and dry docking contract for the carrier signed in November 2024, after earlier refits of INS Viraat in 2009 and 2012.

Southern Naval Command has been headquartered at Kochi, at INS Venduruthy, since it grew out of the post of Commodore Cochin in the years after independence and became a full training command by 1986. It runs the Navy's training establishments on this coast, a naval air station and a ship repair facility of its own, on the same stretch of water as the yard.

Cochin Shipyard's own account of its repair business describes work under way since 1982, on naval vessels, offshore rigs and merchant tonnage alike, run alongside the newbuilding programme that later produced INS Vikrant. The yard sits at Perumanoor, a short run from Cochin Port's berths on Willingdon Island, so a vessel working this harbour has a shipyard, a naval command and a commercial port within a few kilometres of each other rather than spread along the coast.