Turkey, HDW ready for joint bid

Ümit Enginsoy ANKARA

A partnership consisting of Turkey’s procurement office, German shipyard HDW and a smaller Turkish shipyard is expected to submit a joint bid next week to build two 209-class submarines for Indonesia’s Navy, a senior official said yesterday.

“Just a few formalities need to be completed with the German side and then our joint bid will be submitted,” the senior Turkish procurement official told the Hürriyet Daily News. “Our bid is good and we will wait for Indonesia’s decision.”

The bid, which is worth $1 billion, will be competing against South Korea’s Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering, which has offered to build three 209 submarines worth $1.2 billion. One major problem for the Korean side, however, is that Daewoo is trying to sell submarines whose license belongs to HDW (Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft), which has teamed up with the Undersecretariat for Defense Industries, Turkey’s procurement agency. Daewoo has the capability to produce the 209s, but it is not clear if it may do so without HDW’s license, according to analysts.

Led by Deputy Defense Minister Kemal Yardımcı, a senior Turkish defense team visited Indonesia for talks late last week and early this week. Those talks coincided with Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç’s visit to the Indonesian island of Bali.

Yardımcı and his aides had extensive defense industry talks with Indonesian authorities, the procurement official said.

“Even a road map has emerged about future defense industry cooperation between our countries,” he said. “In addition to the submarine matter, we discussed major projects that could include our [military electronics conglomerate] Aselsan, our [rocket manufacturer] Roketsan and our armored vehicle manufacturers.”

French and Russian offers fell out of the running early in the submarine tender opened last year by the Indonesian Navy, and South Korea’s Daewoo emerged as the leading candidate. Daewoo was expected to bid together with Germany’s HDW, but later decided to join the competition on its own.
HDW is also co-manufacturing with Turkey six modern U 214-type diesel submarines for the Turkish Navy. Earlier with HDW, Turkey built 14 U-209 submarines, which Indonesia now wants to buy.