BROWNSVILLE, Texas - In addition to the RGG Business Journal, and the Austin Business Journal, Breaking Defense has also written about Saronic’s plans to build a next-generation $3.2 billion “Port Alpha” shipyard.
Cameron County is set to hold a public hearing March 24 to consider providing tax abatements in order to land Saronic, an Austin-based startup. If the company selects Cameron County, the shipyard would be built at the Port of Brownsville and potentially create 10,000 jobs.
“I think between the work that we're doing at the county, in conjunction with the city, in conjunction with the state leadership, we're very cautiously optimistic that we're going to be able to make this one a reality,” Cameron County Judge Eddie Treviño, Jr., told the RGG Business Journal.
Citing Dino Mavrookas, Saronic’s CEO, and Saronic’s co-founder Rob Lehman, the company has not yet selected a location for the new shipyard, Breaking Defense said. They declined to provide a timeline for the new project, except to say they will move “as fast as possible,” the publication states.
“Port Alpha will reflect the apex of America’s shipbuilding past — generating new opportunities for the country’s shipbuilding workforce, forging public-private partnerships to accelerate growth, and bringing innovation and ingenuity to an essential industry,” Dino Mavrookas, Saronic’s CEO, told Breaking Defense.
“We will bring these elements together with a single goal: to rapidly build a fleet of autonomous vessels in America that redefine maritime superiority and guarantees freedom of the seas for generations to come.”
Saronic has been awarded a $392 million by the contract U.S. Navy, according to Work Boat.
A spokesperson for Saronic told the RGG Business Journal: "Saronic’s nationwide search for a location to build Port Alpha remains active and ongoing. Recent filings are a standard part of the vetting process for sites under consideration, reflecting the thorough and deliberate approach required by Port Alpha’s unique requirements.”
Saronic executives told Breaking Defense that they will work with federal and state governments to determine the best location. “Any new location is only going to be successful if they can sort out a key issue facing all naval programs today: Workforce development.” It continued: “Finding people to build ships has a been a top issue for both the US Navy and the defense industrial base in recent years.”
Cameron County leaders are confident the Rio Grande Valley has the talent to build ships. They cite the ship building currently underway at the Port of Brownsville by Seatrium AmFELS.
Randy Perez, economic development director for Hidalgo County, believes his county can provide a lot of the workers needed in Cameron County. During a recent webinar hosted by the Prosperity Task Force, Perez said Hidalgo County is working with Cameron County and UT-Rio Grande Valley to further that initiative.
“We had a recent meeting with Cameron County. And we all know and have seen the amount of growth that Cameron County has seen because of SpaceX and LNG and those types of markets that are in our area. And so one of the things that we spoke about was the workforce, and what are we doing here in Hidalgo County?" Perez told the webinar.
"And so it's a great opportunity to join collaboratively with the two counties… to show how we can help, because, literally, they asked for Hidalgo County's help, because of the workforce we have. The population Cameron County is smaller than than Hidalgo County but because of major projects that are coming that are going to be requiring a high amount of workforce… it's something that that obviously we want to prepare for.”
According to Breaking Defense, Saronic has received a $600 million Series C funding round, which was led by Elad Gil, a San Francisco-based entrepreneur and investor with previous stints at Google and Twitter. The round evaluated the company’s worth at $4 billion, which Saronic says effectively “quadrupled” its valuation.
Mavrookas told Breaking Defense that Saronic is “changing the culture” around shipbuilding.
“You look at the workforce we built today, we have over 350 employees… We’ve attracted people from Silicon Valley that focus on software. We’ve been attracting people from SpaceX and Tesla that run our manufacturing and production line. Now we’re going to combine those folks with the lead naval architects and people that are focused on shipbuilding,” he said.
“We’re raising the private capital to hire the people. We’re creating a training pipeline to attract the people. We’re going have programs in place to recruit to people. We’re focused on building the entire ecosystem around this shipyard,” he continued.
Saronic in October unveiled plans to mass produce “hundreds” of its newest autonomous surface vessel, “Corsair,” citing the Pentagon’s need for expendable drones manufactured en masse, Breaking Defense states. The company’s announcements largely align with the framework the Defense Department has projected for its Replicator initiative, but the company, like others that have made similar announcements, has been coy when asked about specific deals or discussions with the Pentagon.
The company last year also acquired a roughly 420,000-square-foot production and manufacturing facility in Austin, Texas. That space is scheduled to be fully operational by the end of this year, Mavrookas said, Breaking Defense wrote.
