HD Hyundai’s chief attended high-level roundtable at India’s prime minister Narendra Modi’s invitation last week.
The chairman of one of the largest shipbuilders in South Korea Chung Kisun and HD Korea Shipbuilding & Offshore Engineering chief executive officer Kim Hyungkwan met on Wednesday, January 28, with Modi at the prime minister’s official residence in New Delhi to discuss expanding bilateral cooperation in shipbuilding.
The cooperation spans commercial and naval shipbuilding and port crane projects; a joint shipyard development to be pursued.
The high-level roundtable was held as part of India Energy Week 2026, bringing together about 30 participants, including prime minister Modi, ministers from relevant Indian government bodies, heads of state-owned enterprises, and chief executives of global companies, to discuss avenues for cooperation.
During the meeting, chairman Chung expressed appreciation for the prime minister’s commitment to fostering the shipbuilding industry and asked for continued interest and support for HD Hyundai’s ongoing collaborative initiatives with India.
“HD Hyundai continues to maintain close collaborative relationships with India across a wide range of areas,” Chung said. “India is a key pillar of our strategy to diversify overseas production bases, and I am confident it will serve as a new engine of growth for HD Hyundai.”
To take part in the Indian government’s Maritime Amrit Kaal Vision 2047 initiative, HD Hyundai signed a memorandum of understanding in July last year with Cochin Shipyard, India’s state-owned shipbuilder, agreeing to cooperate across multiple areas, including design and procurement support, productivity improvements, and workforce capability development.
More recently, HD Hyundai expanded its collaboration with Cochin Shipyard to include naval vessels. It has also accelerated its entry into the Indian market by signing an exclusive MOU with the government of Tamil Nadu to jointly build a shipyard and advance crane business cooperation with state-owned BEML.
India has also shown strong interest in strengthening cooperation with HD Hyundai. In November last year and again in January this year, Hardeep Singh Puri, India’s minister of petroleum and natural gas, and T. R. B. Rajaa, Tamil Nadu’s minister for industries, respectively, visited South Korea to tour HD Hyundai’s Global R&D Center and HD Hyundai Heavy Industries’ Ulsan shipyard and discuss ways to deepen cooperation with the group.
“India is a key pillar of our overseas production diversification strategy, poised to become HD Hyundai’s new growth engine,” reads the company’s statement.
