Page 26: of Marine News Magazine (April 2024)

25 27

Feature

ECO Edison, the ? rst U.S.-

Shipbuilding built wind farm service operations vessel.

Ørsted

U.S.

SHIPBUILDING

REPORT

By Barry Parker

If nothing else, building vessels in the U.S. is a com- handle), handling “…government and commercial work, plicated business. primarily newbuilds, but also repairs,” talked about the

In a session on the domestic shipbuilding marketplace, balance between government versus private-sector work at Marine Money’s late-November 2023 conference held in for U.S. yards. He noted the extreme cyclicality of com-

New Orleans, Ben Bordelon, president and CEO of Bol- mercial work, saying, “It’s extremely challenging to recruit, linger Shipyards (with more than a dozen facilities, in Mis- train and sustain a workforce” with all the ups and downs, sissippi and Louisiana), described his company’s architecture and described the yard’s moves into to government work. as a “three-legged stool approach: commercial newbuilds, “It was really about providing a good and steady base for government newbuilds and repair/conversion capabilities”. riding out those cycles,” he said.

On the same panel, moderated by Roy Bleiberg, who Highlighting his yard’s successes with work for the U.S. handles Business Development, North America, for ABS, Coast Guard in construction of Offshore Patrol Cutters

Joey D’Isernia, the chairman and CEO of Eastern Ship- (OPC), D’Isernia stressed the challenges of doing both building Group (with three yards in the Florida Pan- government and commercial work (historically, the yard’s 26 | MN April 2024