Ships continue arriving at Port of Brownsville to be dismantled
BROWNSVILLE - The federal government announced this week that Brownsville will receive four more obsolete ships to be dismantled.
This brings to nine the total number of U.S. Maritime Administration, or MARAD, ships arriving at the Port of Brownsville this year.
International Shipbreaking, Ltd. will pay $1,151,727 to dismantle the ship Adonis, now moored at the Beaumont Reserve Fleet. In addition, the company paid $173,297 for the Cape Catawba, the Cape Canaveral and the Buyer.
According to Bob Berry, chief operating officer of International Shipbreaking, the projects will keep the business busy.
International Shipbreaking, which currently employs 140 workers, will likely hire on an additional 100 workers as the ships arrive in the coming weeks, Berry said.
"We're happy to have these ships and keep our people working," Berry said. "This represents a year's worth of work."
The soaring cost of steel, at around $300 a ton, has reversed the traditional role between U.S. Department of Transportation's Maritime Administration and the nation's ship breaking industry.
Typically, ship disposal contracts involved the federal government paying to have obsolete ships recycled, however, the high price of scrap steel on the world market has allowed MARAD to sell its ships to the highest bidder.
MARAD keeps ships in three National Defense Reserve Fleet sites to support Armed Forces movements and to respond to national emergencies.
Those sites are the James River Reserve Fleet in Newport News, Va.; Beaumont Reserve Fleet in Beaumont; and Suisun Bay Reserve Fleet in Benicia, Calif.
When the ships become obsolete, MARAD arranges for their disposition in an environmentally sensitive manner.
Two of the ships being sold, the Cape Catawba and the Cape Canaveral, are breakbulk freighters.
The Adonis is a liquid-bulk tanker and the Buyer is a breakbulk vessel.
For International Shipbreaking, which recently finished dismantling a Navy ship, the recent contracts could not have come at a better time.
"Currently the Port of Brownsville's ship breaking industry is looking pretty," Berry said. "We'll certainly continue bidding on ships this year."
