HD Hyundai and Kiewit Offshore Services Ltd. are looking to bring South Korean shipbuilding expertise into U.S. Gulf Coast fabrication work, including potential ship block and module production for domestic shipbuilding programs.
The companies announced a strategic partnership agreement aimed at pursuing U.S. shipbuilding opportunities and other areas of mutual interest. The agreement was signed July 16 at Kiewit Offshore Services’ headquarters in Ingleside, Texas.
The announcement did not include a specific vessel program, contract award, or production timeline. Instead, the agreement creates a framework for the companies to explore how HD Hyundai’s ship design, procurement, manufacturing, and shipbuilding technology capabilities could be paired with Kiewit’s large-scale fabrication and project execution expertise.
The companies specifically identified ship block and module fabrication as one area of potential collaboration. That approach could allow Kiewit Offshore Services to support U.S. shipbuilding programs from its Gulf Coast fabrication facilities without positioning the partnership as a full-vessel construction arrangement at this stage.
HD Hyundai said the partnership is intended to support the expansion of U.S. shipbuilding capacity and strengthen the maritime industrial base. The company has spent more than five decades building commercial, offshore, and naval vessels from shipyards in South Korea and abroad.
Kiewit Offshore Services, part of Kiewit Corp., has decades of large-scale fabrication, marine construction, and complex project execution work from its Gulf Coast facilities. The companies said the partnership is intended to support commercial and government shipbuilding opportunities.
“The United States is a strong ally and a key business partner for us,” said Hannae Choi, executive vice president and head of the corporate planning office at HD Korea Shipbuilding & Offshore Engineering. “Through our cooperation with KOS, we intend to actively support the expansion of U.S. shipbuilding and maritime infrastructure, while also exploring additional areas of collaboration, including opportunities involving floating assets.”
Choi signed the agreement with Chad Johnson, president of Kiewit Offshore Services.
“Kiewit has a long history of delivering some of North America’s most complex industrial and marine projects,” Johnson said. “By combining our extensive fabrication and EPC project execution expertise with HD Hyundai’s shipbuilding experience, we’re creating new opportunities to support the growth of U.S. shipbuilding while helping strengthen the nation’s maritime industrial base for the future.”
The companies said the partnership is intended to help expand domestic fabrication capacity, strengthen supply chain resilience, and support collaboration between allied industrial partners as U.S. shipbuilding capacity remains under pressure.
The agreement lands amid a broad push in Washington to rebuild the U.S. maritime industrial base, which the Trump administration has made a centerpiece of its industrial and national-security agenda through a Maritime Action Plan released in February.
