Interview | Managing director, Naval Group in India, Bernard Buisson

‘Naval Group in India is Keen to Have the DRDO AIP Integrated in the P75 Submarines Sooner or Later’

Why has DCNS changed its name to Naval Group?

In a world of profound changes, with the acceleration of innovation cycles and a growing competitive landscape in the defence market, it is necessary for our group to assert its identity through the creation of a powerful brand.

We found this to be the right time, riding the momentum of our recent successes in 2016 regarding new orders, progresses in our ongoing projects and the creation of our subsidiary in marine renewable energy.

It only seemed natural to take advantage of this gained level of visibility and thus further raise our profile.

Naval Group clarifies both who we are and as well as our mission of safeguarding the sovereign interests of our customers at sea and make the most of our naval skills to support their energy transition.

This new identity is a natural step in our Group’s history, aimed at supporting our ambitions to guarantee exposure and credibility in international markets.

 

Under the new Strategic Partnership policy, the government is likely to go with either L&T or Reliance Defence for the submarines programme. Will DCNS participate in this programme? Have you reached out to any of these companies?

Recent Strategic Partnership model issued by ministry of defence is really a step forward to this goal of ‘Make in India’, a robust shipbuilding nation having experienced public sector shipyards and also dependable private players.

Having performed a successful cooperation with Indian shipyard like Mazagon Dock Limited (MDL) for P75 project, Naval Group in India is comfortable and experienced in dealing with key topics of transfer of technology (ToT) to shipyards, management of activities of shipbuilding with Indian partner, organisation of indigenisation programmes etc. Consequently, we would like to believe that future possibilities to associate as foreign Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) with possible Strategic Partnership (SP) for any strategic naval project will be a seamless cooperation with real value-added results in field of naval ship or submarine building.

Naval Group is in a position to offer a submarine fully in line with Indian Navy’s expectation for enhanced capabilities. We understand the future submarines are to be procured as per SP guidelines and the submarines are to be built by the shipyard that will be chosen by the Indian government as strategic partner. In this process, our first action would be to answer to future requests from navy to Naval Group as OEM and then follow the guidelines of the SP model to answer to any shipyard who the Indian Navy would like us to get associated with as per the process.

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