French submarine manufacturing company Naval Group has pulled out of the race for the `45,000 crore project for six conventional submarines for India. The company said it is unable to meet the terms and conditions related to the air-independent propulsion (AIP) system. The development came ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris on Wednesday.
India had floated a global tender or Request for Proposal (RFP) for the manufacturing of six submarines in the country in collaboration with Indian companies. The project called P-75 I is part of the Strategic Partnership programme.
The Defence Ministry in June last year selected Larsen and Toubro and state-run Mazagaon Docks Limited, Mumbai as the Indian partners. They have to tie up with one of the five shortlisted foreign companies, including ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems (Germany), Navantia (Spain), Naval Group (France), Daewoo (South Korea) and Rosoboronexport (Russia).
The French company on Tuesday said it is unable to participate in Centre’s P-75I project due to conditions mentioned in the request for proposal (RFP) or tender related to air-independent propulsion (AIP) system.
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French submarine maker backs out of India project
The AIP system allows a conventional submarine to stay submerged in water at higher speeds for a longer period of time and reduces the noise of the diesel engines powering the submarine.
The `45,000 crore-contract will be awarded by the Defence Ministry following a detailed evaluation of the responses sent by the two strategic partners.
In a statement on Tuesday, Laurent Videau, Country and Managing Director, Naval Group India, said, "Due to certain conditions in the RFP, the two strategic partners could not forward the request to us and a few other FOEMs (foreign original equipment manufacturers) and thus we have not been able to place an official bid for the project."
Naval Group has always been ready to offer the best in class and adapted solution for Indian Navy's P75I project, being fully in line with AatmaNirbhar Bharat principle, he said.
"However, the present RFP requires that the fuel cell AIP (air independent propulsion) be sea proven, which is not the case for us yet since the French Navy does not use such propulsion system," he mentioned. Nevertheless, Naval Group strengthens its existing commitments and looks forward to closer association with India, he said.
"Our focus and efforts are towards continuation of our collaboration with Indian industry in realising the vision of Government of India by supporting Indian Navy for other future developments and projects (maintenance, high tech tools, indigenous AIP, incremental improvements in Scorpene designed submarine, heavy weight torpedoes, larger ships etc)," he mentioned.
Incidentally, the Naval Group in collaboration with the Mazagaon Docks Limited (MDL) manufactured six Kalvari class (Scorpene)submarines for the Indian Navy under the Project -75. The P-75I is the second project to build more submarines in India.
The P-75-I envisages indigenous construction of six modern conventional submarines (including associated shore support, engineering support package, training and spares package) with contemporary equipment, weapons and sensors including fuel-cell based AIP (Air Independent Propulsion Plant), advanced torpedoes, modern missiles and state-of-the-art countermeasure systems.