India’s Maritime Ambition: Time to Build Our Own Marine Engines

Syllabus: GS3/Defense

Context

• India’s shipbuilding industry needs to develop indigenous marine engine manufacturing capabilities to avoid technological chokepoints and strengthen its maritime sector, which remains largely dependent on foreign suppliers.

India’s Shipbuilding Industry: Current Status and Growth Trends

• Market Value Surge: The industry expanded from a valuation of $90 million in 2022 to $1.12 billion in 2024. Projections indicate a leap to $8 billion by 2033, reflecting a robust compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 60%.
• Global Standing: Despite this growth, India holds a mere 0.06% share in the global shipbuilding market, trailing behind leaders like China, South Korea, and Japan, which collectively dominate 94% of the market .
• Dependence on Foreign Vessels: India spends approximately $90 billion annually on sea freight, primarily utilizing foreign-owned vessels. 
• Marine Engine Dependency: Over 90% of engines above 6 MW on Indian vessels are sourced from just five global OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers).
  • These marine engines aren’t just expensive, they’re technologically locked down.
• India’s Future Plan: India has ambitious plans to become a top-five shipbuilding nation by 2047, backed by strategic investments and policy support.

India’s Challenges in Building Marine Engines

• Technological Gap: Modern marine engines are embedded with proprietary Electronic Control Units (ECUs), closed-source software, and IP-restricted components.
  • It increases procurement dependency and extends it to diagnostics, updates, and maintenance.
• Import Dependencies: Over 90% of marine engines above 6 MW used in Indian commercial and naval vessels are sourced from a handful of global manufacturers in Germany, Finland, UK, US, and Japan.
  • Marine engines account for 15–20% of a ship’s cost and are central to its performance, emissions, and lifecycle.
• Export Control Frameworks: These like EU Dual-Use Regulation, U.S. Export Administration Regulations (EAR), and Japan’s METI licensing controls can impose immediate embargoes under national security pretexts.
• Design Capability Deficit: Modern marine engine design is a multi-parameter optimization challenge, balancing propulsion efficiency, emissions, structural durability, and hybrid integration.
  • India’s lack of indigenous design capabilities severely hampers its ability.
• Metallurgical Limitations: India’s limited capacity in producing materials like high-chromium steels, nickel-based superalloys, and  thermally stable composites at scale has hampered its aero-engine programs.
• Tribology and Surface Engineering Bottlenecks: Marine engine efficiency is deeply linked to tribology — the science of wear, lubrication, and friction.
  • India lacks scalable industrial ecosystems for these precision requirements. It requires:
    • Advanced ceramic and composite coatings
    • Precision surface engineering
    • Micron-level machining capability
• Outdated Training Infrastructure: India’s top engineering institutes still rely on obsolete training models.
  • With Alang — the world’s largest ship-breaking yard — on Indian soil, modern decommissioned engines should be repurposed for training and reverse engineering.

Related Government Initiatives & Efforts

• Shipbuilding Financial Assistance Policy (SBFAP): It has been instrumental in encouraging domestic shipyards by providing financial aid for specialized vessels, including wind farm installation ships and advanced dredgers.
• Financial Assistance: Up to 30% subsidy for vessels powered by green fuels like methanol, ammonia, and hydrogen fuel cells.
• Procurement Preference: Ships costing less than ₹200 crores must be procured from Indian shipyards.
• Infrastructure Status: Shipyards now enjoy infrastructure status, enabling access to cheaper long-term capital.
• Right of First Refusal (RoFR): Indian shipyards have priority in government tenders, ensuring more domestic contracts.
• Union Budget 2025: It has laid the foundation for a maritime resurgence with several transformative initiatives:
  • Mega shipbuilding clusters
  • A ₹25,000 crore Maritime Development Fund
• Customs duty exemptions for critical imports
• Infrastructure status for large vessels
• Indigenous Engine Initiatives: In April 2025, the Indian Navy sanctioned ₹270 crore to Kirloskar Oil Engines Ltd to develop a 6 MW medium-speed diesel engine.

Way Forward

• India needs to diversify its innovation ecosystem. Large public and private firms alone cannot drive this transformation. The key lies in:
  • Encouraging marine propulsion-focused startups
  • Supporting them with design-linked incentives and targeted R&D funds
  • Facilitating lab-to-market transitions through institutes like IIT Madras.
• These startups can inject agility, risk tolerance, and interdisciplinary approaches — all critical to engine innovation.
• To empower new ecosystem, India needs to develop a national framework that includes:
  • Dedicated propulsion innovation missions
  • Access to marine-grade testbeds
  • Public procurement guarantees to derisk startup involvement
  • Development and licensing of domain-specific software for combustion and thermodynamic simulation, 3D mechanical design, structural stress analysis, and control system development.

Conclusion

• India’s maritime ambitions are real and rapidly materialising. With new shipyards, modernised facilities, and strong government backing, the nation is poised for a shipbuilding renaissance. But without the capability to design and manufacture indigenous marine engines, India risks building vessels that are Indian in flag, crew, and steel — but foreign in soul.

Source: IE