Commercial Ship Repair News

Shipbuilder Austal USA announced it is planning to boost capacity at its Mobile, Ala. shipyard with the addition of a new manufacturing facility.The infrastructure expansion, which will be to the south of Austal USA’s current waterfront facility, will include a new assembly building, waterfront improvements, and a new Pearlson-designed shiplift system. Start of construction on the project is planned for summer 2024.The construction of this new building and waterfront support area continues the expansion Austal USA began in March 2021 with the groundbreaking of the steel panel line.

Shipyards across the U.S. are investing in new equipment to increase lift capacity, opening up the door for more projects and improved efficiency.Southern California-based Marine Group Boat Works, which performs a mix of yacht, commercial and government vessel repair work, in 2022 repowered its 665-ton Marine Travelift mobile boat hoist—the largest on the West Coast—with a Tier 4 John Deere engine. And earlier this year it was awarded a MARAD Small Shipyard Grant worth more than…

BAE Systems announced it will spend $200 million for upgrades aimed at increasing capacity and flexibility at its Jacksonville, Fla. ship repair yard. The investment covers the preparation, construction, procurement and installation of a modern Pearlson shiplift and land-level ship repair facility, giving the yard the capability to service a greater number of vessels more efficiently.Located two miles from the Atlantic Ocean, at the intersection of the St. Johns River and the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway…

Known best for its construction of U.S. Navy warships, Austal USA in September 2020 acquired waterfront property along the Mobile River and established a commercial ship repair facility. Mike Bell, Austal’s VP Operations and Harley Combs, Director, Austal West Campus Ship Repair discuss the plan. Austal USA’s long-established shipbuilding facility in Mobile, Ala., is a modern ship manufacturing factory, one of the largest aluminum warship builders in the world producing new ships for the U.S. Navy.

Marine services contractor Phoenix announced it has appointed Chris Williams to the position of Vice President, Manned Operations.In this new role Williams will be responsible for planning, training and execution of Phoenix’s diving and Atmospheric Diving System (ADS) operations. He will work closely with our General and Area Managers to ensure that they have the resources needed to continue meeting the requirements of our clients while simultaneously growing our underwater solutions business.Patrick Keenan…

Gulf Copper and Manufacturing Corporation has appointed Jonathan Whitworth as a member to its board of directors.Whitworth, a graduate of Texas A&M University at Galveston (TAMUG), brings his extensive working history and experience back to Texas. He holds an MBA in Finance with a focus on marine business and currently serves as vice chairman of the TAMUG Board of Visitors.“I feel very fortunate to have retired and moved back to Galveston Island, a city which has a rich maritime history and a place with great memories for both me and my wife,” said Whitworth.

Vice President and General Manager of Fincantieri Bay Shipbuilding, Todd Thayse, has 34 years of experience in the maritime construction and repair industry, working with clients from all over the world as well as vendors and suppliers from the Great Lakes region and beyond. He has an extensive background in manufacturing production, material procurement, strategic planning, estimating, budgeting, labor negotiations, mergers and acquisitions as well as scheduling for both the commercial and governmental shipbuilding industries. He has overseen projects that have produced U.S.

Loy Stewart, Jr. is President, Detyens Shipyards. He is a 1991 graduate of the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy in Kings Point where he earned a degree in Marine Engineering. After several months sailing on the Sealift Atlantic, Loy began working at Detyens as a Ship Superintendent and coordinated work on numerous commercial and navy contracts. In 1996, when the Detyens Shipyards were divided into separate profit centers, Loy Jr. was promoted to Profit Center Manager of the Wando facility.

In a world driven by the dollar sign, D. Loy Stewart, Jr., owner and president of Detyens Shipyards missed the memo. Make no mistake, Stewart is steadfast to deliver on-time, excellent service to Detyens’ broad array of ship repair clients, from government to commercial, both foreign and domestic. He understands that a ship in his yard is not making its owner – his client –  money, and he is laser focused on keeping his clients happy, returning ships to service on time, on budget. But Stewart is driven by a calling larger than profit margin, building a successful U.S.

The Minister of Shipping in India,  Nitin Gadkari has said that Cochin is all set to become a global ship repair hub. He was speaking at Cochin, after laying the  foundation stone for a INR 970-crore (USD 148 million) International Ship Repair Facility (ISRF) for Cochin Shipyard Limited. The facility is being built at Cochin Port Trust where CSL has leased out a 40-acre plot for the project. The International Ship Repair facility will be a State of the Art facility that can handle a major chunk of small and medium sized vessels plying in India. CSL will set up a ship lift system of size 130 m x 25 m with lifting capacity of 6000 tonnes and 6 work stations. The facility can repair up to 85 vessels, and CSL will thereby  be almost doubling the number of ships that can be repaired every year.

Shipbuilder and Heavy Steel Fabricator Metal Trades, Inc., located on Yonges Island, SC has announced the launch of its largest ever built new construction barge. This barge is 370’ x 59’ x 14’. It is designed to hold a total of 18- 60 foot rail cars capable of carrying cargo for up to 2298 Long Tons for New York New Jersey Rail, LLC (NYNJR), a short line railroad and wholly-owned entity of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Metal Trades, Inc. is contracted to build a total of two of these barges and the first of these barges is to be delivered next week.

Matt Paxton, president of the Shipbuilder’s Council of America, shares with Maritime Reporter & Engineering News his insights on the opportunities and challenges ahead. The United States shipbuilding market is diverse and geographically widespread, tasked to build everything from the most sophisticated military warships on the planet to small ferries, and everything in between. As president of SCA since 2007, Matt Paxton has made it job one to make SCA a unifying voice for the collective industry, a champion of the industry in raising its profile and stature in political and business circles.

Vigor said it has entered into an agreement to purchase a drydock from a Korean seller, continuing the shipbuilder’s ongoing infrastructure investments and expansion of U.S. West Coast drydock capacity. At 640 feet long with a clear width of 116 feet, the new dock will be the third, and largest, at Vigor’s Harbor Island shipyard. “The purchase of another drydock in Seattle allows Vigor to better service valued  customers like Washington State Ferries, the U.S. Coast Guard and U.S. Navy,” said Adam Beck, Vigor Executive Vice President of Ship Repair. Beck and his team had been actively looking for the right drydock at home and abroad for a number of months. The one selected happened to be in Korea.

Fabrication teams at Vigor Industrial’s Tacoma, Wash. shipyard have delivered three 60’ x 24’ x 15.5’ breasting barges to Foss Maritime. The barge system will be used to moor Shell’s drill rigs at Terminal 5 in Seattle, Wash. where the company is scheduled to ready its fleet for Arctic drilling this summer. The project was completed in less than two months and created 60 family wage jobs for the Tacoma yard and its subcontractors. “We are so pleased that our Tacoma shipyard is now building new vessels,” said Bryan Nichols, Vigor Fab sales manager.

5 new apprentices have started work at A&P Falmouth shipyard, underlining the company’s long-term commitment to Cornwall (in the extreme Southwest of England) and the future of the dockyard there. The apprentices beat off stiff competition from almost 70 applicants to be awarded the opportunity with A&P, one of the biggest commercial ship repair companies in the UK. They are electricians Dave Blizzard, aged 21, from Falmouth and Ben Casley, aged 23, from The Lizard; and marine fitters Jordan Moorhouse…

Since the beginning of this year, orders have been placed for 17 floating production systems. The combined value of the fabrication contracts exceeds $16 billion. By year end there will likely be another five to eight contracts awarded and the overall contract value for the year will exceed $20 billion. Stated in terms of conventional ships, fabrication of floating production systems in 2013 will equate to orders for 220 VLCCs, 360 Suezmax tankers or 800 Panamax bulk carriers. In other words, it is a big market. Yet relatively few shipbuilders are active in this sector.

A&P Falmouth has launched an apprenticeship recruitment search to find raw talent in Cornwall (SW England). The purpose of the scheme is to train and hone into the skilled engineering and marine workers of the future. In the last five years A&P, as one of the biggest commercial ship repair companies in the UK, has recruited 33 adult trainees for specialist in-house training. Now six young people in the Duchy of Cornwall will have the opportunity to join its 400-strong workforce and learn a range of specialist skills including engineering, steel fabrication, painting and blasting.

The Kulluk and Noble Discoverer set sail for the Arctic today from Vigor Industrial’s Seattle shipyard, following completion of extensive environmental and safety upgrades by its commercial ship repair subsidiary, Vigor Marine. The Kulluk, an ice-classed semi-submersible drill rig measuring 266’ x 230’, arrived at Vigor’s Seattle yard in July, 2011. Following the work done by Vigor Marine teams, it will operate with zero discharge in the Beaufort and Chuckchi Seas. Everything down to the sink water will be captured and stored.

NSRP ASE sponsors a variety of R&D projects that address lean initiatives — some focusing on new construction and others on repair. One notable lean repair project that has demonstrated rapid payback and implementation involves the surface preparation process. Traditionally, about 25 percent of ship repair work has focused on surface preparation processes, and roughly 67 percent of surface preparation work involves non-value-added activities, according to industrial engineering time studies from Atlantic Marine. Through an NSRP-sponsored Ultra-High Pressure Water Blasting (UHPWB) project, Atlantic Marine is achieving substantial process improvements and related savings in time and money.

John Riding, director of Marico Marine, speaking at Ship Repair & Conversion in London, presents a rosy picture for the future of ship repair by pointing out that freight rates have not been so high for years and some owners, such as bulk carrier operators are enjoying a rare opportunity to seriously invest in maintenance. The busy state of building yards means that "keeping an older vessel in service longer has great commercial attraction," said Riding. He believes that some repair yards have the potential to make a return for the first time in a long time. However, there is a fly in the ointment in the form of the ISPS Code. The code as has implementation date of July 2004 and applies to all passenger ships…

A down economy, a disabled drydock and a nation under heightened security measures — not exactly the best position for a ship repair facility to be in — or so one would think. Norfolk Shipbuilding & Drydock Corporation (NORSHIPCO) however has managed to stay on top with its steady stream of government and commercial work coming in into its yard. With 70 percent of NORSHIPCO's work on the government side, the yard has still had a steady stream of commercial work. According to Krekich, the work that was performed on MSC ship M/V SSG Edward A. Carter was successful in terms of schedule, costs and customer satisfaction. The 950-ft. (289.5 m) vessel, which arrived at NORSHIPCO on March 1, 2001, is under a long-term charter to MSC.

Jacksonville shipyard purchases a Marine Travelift 600C to compliment existing dry dock. The Commodore Point Facility at North Florida Shipyards, Inc. has been providing commercial ship repair and modernization support to customers for over 30 years. To maintain its current customer base and generate new business the shipyard invested in a Marine Travelift 600C mobile boat hoist with the assistance of federal stimulus package funds. Through the U.S. Department of Transportation Maritime Administration’s assistance to small shipyards program…

BAE Systems recently completed a four week repair docking for the platform supply vessel (PSV) the ‘Lady Kari-Ann’ in its Williamstown shipyard. Owned by Farstad Shipping, the Lady Kari-Ann is the first commercial ship repair project undertaken in the yard since 2009. Work on the vessel included a 30-year survey, paint work on the hull, superstructure and tanks as well as underwater valves and other mechanical work associated with the ship’s propulsion. Director of BAE Systems Maritime…