The U.S. shipbuilding industry is looking for help. A South Korean company is answering the call.
Hanwha Philly Shipyard CEO David Kim, nodding to the gargantuan vessels under construction just off the Delaware River, on Wednesday offered the kind of vision that has brought some optimism back to the U.S. shipbuilding community.
“You take that level of experience, the technology that we have, the know-how, the process expertise, and so clearly, we believe we have a lot to bring to the Philly Shipyard, as well as to the U.S. maritime industrial base, in terms of modernization capacity,” he said on a walkthrough of the shipyard.
Hanwha Group bought the Philly Shipyard in December for $100 million and plans to invest multiple times that amount in the yard, training over a thousand new workers and bringing in new high-tech equipment. The company hopes to build naval ships and become the first U.S. builder of specialized liquefied natural gas tankers.
Shipbuilding in the United States has been all but dormant. China, South Korea, Japan and Europe all produce far more ships than the United States, with the few shipyards still operating in the country concentrating on military ships.
Revitalizing shipbuilding has been one of the areas President Donald Trump has pointed to as part of a broader effort to bring manufacturing back to the United States — a move some see as shortsighted considering the costs associated with building the kind of gigantic modern ships that remain a core part of how goods and commodities move around the planet.
Part of the answer is modernization and automation. The Philly Shipyard employs around 1,800 workers, including dozens of experts and workers from Hanwha’s Korean facilities, to build production efficiency and train over 170 apprentices.
Kim said Hanwha has added hundreds of jobs since it bought the yard in December.
The facility builds one and a half ships a year; Hanwha plans to outfit it with “smart yard technology” to speed up manufacturing so it can churn out as many as 10 ships annually and raise sales tenfold, to over $4 billion a year by 2035.
Hanwha’s subsidiary Hanwha Ocean is among the largest shipbuilders in South Korea. Its yard in the country’s southwest produces 40 ships a year.
East Asia dominates commercial shipbuilding. Chinese shipbuilders have built 6,765 commercial ships in the last 10 years, with 3,120 more coming from Japan and 2,405 from South Korea, according to data from BRS Shipbrokers. U.S. shipbuilders have delivered 37.
But with the administration pushing “made in America” manufacturing, U.S. lawmakers hope to bolster the industry, with the bipartisan SHIPS for America Act proposing subsidies for shipyards.
“Every ship that this yard is building is an incremental ship that’s being built in the U.S.,” Kim said. “So that’s jobs that are being created here, that’s supplier work that’s happening here, as well.”
At the shipyard, Hanwha is bringing in technology from its Korean facilities, including computer-aided design, welding robots and virtual-reality training models. Under a model it calls “cobots,” robots work alongside workers like computer-aided manufacturing and design coordinator Kyle Pernell, with human workers in charge of operating, repairing and programming the robots.
“With Hanwha on board, with their expertise and their resources, things are happening a lot faster,” Pernell said.
Workers from all walks of life are joining Hanwha’s 36-month apprentice program, which offers training in welding, shipbuilding and outfitting, and machine operations.
Niecey Zlomek left her job as a hairstylist to join Hanwha’s machinery and propulsion department, where she has been working on lifeboats and hopes to become a team lead. She has joined the employee softball team.
Zlomek felt unfulfilled in the hair salon and joined Hanwha despite lacking familiarity with shipbuilding and fearing heights. She said joining Hanwha has changed her outlook on what she can do.
“My first day, I was climbing up the side of a vessel, and I haven’t stopped climbing ever since,” Zlomek said. “If I have to get up in the high reach, I’m up in the high reach with someone doing something that needs to be done.”
Hanwha hopes to expand into military shipbuilding, building vessels and submarines for the Navy. The yard has already built two ships for training cadets at state merchant marine colleges, with three more in construction, and it has base-level approval to build naval ships.
“One thing we’re trying to do is align with the government, of where its priorities and needs are,” Kim said. “We are here to be additive to the capacity of the industry and to the maritime industrial base.”
