VT Halter shipyard is being sold. What will it mean for the 900 MS Coast jobs?
The sale of VT Halter Marine in Pascagoula to Bollinger Shipyards is expected to go through early next week and the CEO says he is confident he can grow the company and turn a profit.
The nearly 900 employees’ jobs at VT Halter are safe, said Benjamin Bordelon, president and chief executive officer of Bollinger, which operates several shipyards in Louisiana.
“We anticipate that we’re going to obviously hire everyone,” he said, “but we know we have some some growth opportunity and some job needs pretty immediately.”
Bollinger Shipyards is the largest privately-owned and operated shipbuilder in the United States, according to the company. This is the company’s first shipyard in Mississippi and it will renamed Bollinger Mississippi Shipbuilding.
The sale also includes ST Engineering Halter Marine Offshore, which will become Bollinger Mississippi Repair.
Legacy of two shipyards meld
Bordelon met with executives and the media at the VT Halter shipyard in Pascagoula Monday shortly after the announcement of the sale. He plans to meet with the employees after the sale closes.
Bordelon wore not a suit, but jeans and a work shirt. Speaking with a cajun accent, he said he’s been working since December on the process to buy VT Halter and he’s excited about growing into Mississippi and acquiring and expanding the legacy and the workforce of the shipyard
Bollinger has built more than 600 ships since it was founded in 1946.
“Mississippi has been a shipbuilding magnate for decades,” he said, “and the workforce that is developed here is, I think, a tremendous opportunity for us to utilize and grow.”
His grandfather started the business as a machinist, he said, and they employees are the key to success.
VT Halter has lost money in the last few years, which he said was due to a transformation of management and a couple of challenging contract.
“We’ve had our share of hard contracts, there’s no question,” he said. The difference is how you deal with them, he said.
Navy contract
The contracts held by VT Halter will transfer to Bollinger, Bordelon said, and key to making the new company profitable is the Polar Security Cutters the company will build for the U.S. Coast Guard.
Three of the ice cutters have been ordered and there is a potential for more, he said.
The Navy selected VT Halter as the prime contractor at a price of $746 million per icebreaker ship. If all options are exercised, the value of the contract would be $1.9 billion, with the first ship scheduled to be delivered in 2024.
The new company has an opportunity to be involved in on the front end during the engineering process, Bordelon said, and they will be focused on setting up the yard and the program to succeed from the beginning.
He intends for most of the work to be done in Pascagoula, with help possibly from the company’s other shipyards.
“One thing we utilize in our facilities is we’ll share labor where we need to, so if we have a slowdown in one yard, we may use the labor to help support another yard,” he said.
Room to grow
VT Halter Marine had ceased production at two of its shipyards before the sale, and those areas are part of the sale to Bollinger.
The new construction and repair facilities at Pascagoula gives Bollinger increased capacities it didn’t have before, Bordelon said.
“You have a great big footprint here from a facility standpoint of land,” he said. “We have great shops. We have automation that’s here.”
Most important, he said, is the deepwater access with no height restrictions and that stay maintained and dredged to provide opportunity for growth and larger vessels.
This story was originally published November 7, 2022 at 1:02 PM.
