A flagging U.S. industry looks for new life in a Philadelphia shipyard

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.