Part of the answer is modernization and automation. The Philadelphia shipyard employs around 1,800 workers, including dozens of experts and workers from Hanwha’s Korean facilities, to build production efficiency and train more than 170 apprentices.
Kim said Hanwha has added hundreds of jobs since he bought the patio in December.
The installation builds a bar and a half a year; Hanwha plans to equip it with “smart patio technology” to accelerate manufacturing so that it can produce up to 10 ships annually and increase sales ten times, more than $ 4 billion a year by 2035.
The Hanwha Hanwha Ocean subsidiary is among the largest naval builders in South Korea. Its patio in the southwest of the country produces 40 ships a year.
Oriental Asia dominates commercial naval construction. Chinese naval builders have built 6,765 commercial ships in the last 10 years, with 3,120 more from Japan and 2,405 of South Korea, according to data from BRS Shipbrokers. The naval builders of the United States have delivered 37.
But with the administration by pressing the manufacture of “Made in America”, US legislators hope to strengthen the industry, with the Bipartis Law for America that proposes subsidies for shipyards.
“Every ship that is building this patio is an incremental ship that is being built in the United States,” Kim said. “So are the work that is being created here, that is the work of suppliers that is happening here too.”
In the shipyard, Hanwha is bringing technology from its Korean facilities, including computer -assisted design, welding robots and virtual reality training models. Under a model called “Cobots”, robots work along with workers such as the Coordinator of Computer Design and Manufacturing Kyle Pernell, with human workers in charge of operating, repairing and programming robots.
