Saronic Technologies, Austin, has selected Brownsville, Texas, as the home of Port Alpha, a planned next-generation shipyard the company says will produce both autonomous and conventionally crewed commercial and military vessels.
The company plans to invest more than $3 billion in the project, with construction expected to begin in 2026 and operations targeted for 2028. Initially spanning 835 acres at the Port of Brownsville with room to expand to nearly 4,400 acres, the facility is expected to create up to 10,000 direct jobs over the next decade, the company said. Saronic projects the development will generate more than $160 billion in economic impact for Cameron County and $264.5 billion statewide.
Announced during a media roundtable with president and co-founder Dino Mavrookas, the project represents Saronic's largest manufacturing investment to date.
"We're talking about the largest shipyard in the U.S., but [also] one of the largest shipyards in the world," Mavrookas said. "The focus is on modern and advanced manufacturing, being the most efficient and most advanced shipyard in the world with the highest throughput for these types of autonomous systems."
Unlike Saronic's Franklin, La., production facility, which expanded around an existing shipyard, Port Alpha will be a greenfield development designed around advanced manufacturing principles.
"We're not retrofitting an existing yard," Mavrookas said. "That lets us bring advanced manufacturing, efficient process flows, get to high throughput, take advantage of economies of scale, and drive down costs in the shipbuilding process itself."
During its initial build-out, the yard will be capable of constructing vessels up to 850' long. Executives said future expansion could support ships exceeding 1,200' in length. During the roundtable, the company said the initial phase could reach 150,000 gross tons of shipbuilding capacity, with a fully built-out facility capable of approximately 2 million gross tons annually.
Saronic intends the shipyard to serve both defense and commercial markets. While executives declined to identify the company's next vessel program, Mavrookas confirmed the facility will build both crewed and uncrewed ships, with future crewed designs incorporating the company's autonomy technologies.
"We are going to build both manned and unmanned ships," he said. "The manned ships are going to be very differentiated in that we're going to incorporate all of the technology that we're building to make these manned ships more efficient and then deman them as we move into the future."
Beyond defense work, Mavrookas said Saronic envisions the shipyard playing a role in rebuilding the nation's commercial shipbuilding capacity.
"From a commercial perspective, we're looking at how do we build, how do you build container ships again?" he said. "How do you build roll-on, roll-off vessels? How do you build tankers? How do you build icebreakers? How do you build all of these things in the United States at scale? These are absolutely critical, not just for the commercial market, but they're actually critical for national security. If we get into a conflict and we can't resupply our forces, then we have no longevity in that conflict. And we saw that play out in World War II.
"I talk about that a lot with folks throughout the administration. So the commercial variant to this yard is very much just as critical to national security as the straight defense element."
