South Korea’s Hanwha Ocean has detailed how it intends to make its Philadelphia shipyard the top shipbuilder in the US.
Hanwha, which spent $100m buying Philly Shipyard from Aker last year, has outlined how it intends to increase production capacity at its American yard from 1.5 ships to 10 a year, a mix of naval and commercial ships, including LNG carriers.
The aim is to increase revenues at Hanwha Philly Shipyard ten-fold in a decade to $4bn. An old drydock is being reactivated to help meet these new business objectives which have been massively inflated following the return of Donald Trump to the White House.
Trump has spent plenty of time in the first months of his second term in office looking at ways to restrict China’s dominance in the shipbuilding sector, with new US port service fees on China-linked ships set to come into force later this year as well as the creation of a shipbuilding office in the White House.
Trump’s actions have been seen as a bonus in ongoing trade discussions between South Korea and the US with other Korean shipbuilding majors also in discussions to get more business out of the US.
