Report: Hanwha Ocean Looks to Expand in US with Possible Second Shipbuilder
During an exclusive interview with The Wall Street Journal, an executive for Hanwha Defense said the company continues to actively discuss options to expand the Philly Shipyard operation, as well as possibly purchasing a second shipyard in the United States. The South Korean company, the exclusive report said, looks to increase capacity to realize the strong opportunities coming from the Trump administration.
The article reports that Hanwha is already in “active conversation” with the Pentagon for potential deals. It cites the potential for work with surface, subsurface, and unmanned vessels. Yesterday, the company also revealed it has established a new agreement with an American autonomous-vessel company, HavocAI, to compete in the medium-sized unmanned warship space. The firms said they will explore building a 200-foot-long autonomous surface vessel.
Michael Coulter, who heads Hanwha Defense USA, told The Wall Street Journal that the Philly Shipyard, however, needs more space. It has been previously reported that Hanwha was in discussions in the area for possible additional space at or near the current yard. It acquired the yard in December 2024 for $100 million and recently said it plans a $5 billion investment in the facility to expand capabilities and capacity.
During the interview, the executive, however, also mentioned the option of purchasing a second U.S. shipyard. Coulter said they were “seriously considering” a purchase of a second U.S. shipyard in “another region” of the country. He said it would be within the next several years, and the South Korean parent company confirmed to the local media that they are considering options, but said no specific plans have yet been finalized.
Hawha Ocean has previously said it has a goal of expanding the operations at Philly Shipyard to be able to produce up to 20 ships a year. The yard currently produces about one ship a year. The reports said it has committed to modernizing manufacturing methods with elements such as automation and robotics. It has reportedly committed to the Pentagon to undertake workforce expansion, productivity enhancements, facility investments, and technology transfers.
Philly Shipyard was started in 1997 as a government partnership with Norway’s Kvaerner Shipbuilding at a portion of the former Philly Naval Shipyard. Rhoads Industries has operations on another portion of the former Naval Shipyard. The report says Hanwha is discussing gaining access to “unused or underutilized docks” in the area, as well as an arrangement to share space using docks at other shipyards to execute Hanwha’s orders.
Near-term, Philly Shipyard has a commercial orderbook to execute. It is currently making repairs to the third MARAD training ship to complete its delivery and has the last two training ships of the order also in progress. It is completing a rock installation vessel for Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Company, and work has started on the first of three containerships for Matson.
The U.S. subsidiary of Hanwha’s shipping arm, Hanwha Shipping, announced last August that it had ordered 10 medium-range (MR) oil and chemical tankers from Hanwha Philly Shipyard, with the first tanker expected to be delivered by early 2029. It previously announced it would buy a Korean-built LNG carrier and complete its outfitting at the U.S. yard to make it the first modern American-flagged LNG carrier built in 50 years. The tanker project leverages the shipyard’s origins, building tankers for the Jones Act market.
Hanwha has expressed its expectations to be a key player in the Korean Make American Shipbuilding Great Again program, and the promise of a $150 billion investment backed by the Korean government made to the Trump administration during trade talks. Hanwha has also been open about its expectations that it would work closely with Austal after the Korean company became the largest shareholder in the shipbuilder. Hanwha had made an offer to fully acquire Austal, which was rejected by the company by questioning whether the South Korean company could gain clearance from Australia and the United States due to Austal’s role in national security projects.
Hanwha Defense and HavocAI Team Up on Midsize Unmanned Vessels
Korean industrial conglomerate Hanwha has been expanding its portfolio of projects in the U.S. naval and defense space, and on Thursday it announced a new agreement with an American autonomous-vessel company to compete in the medium-sized unmanned warship space.
The deal pairs Hanwha Defense USA and Hanwha Systems with HavocAI, a two-year-old startup run by two Navy veterans. Jointly, the firms will explore building a 200-foot-long autonomous surface vessel, and Hanwha Philly Shipyard is under consideration as the place of production. The goal is to deliver "state-of-the-art ASVs at scale," according to Hanwha Defense USA CEO Michael Coulter.
HavocAI specializes in adaptive collaborative autonomy for the control of multiple vessels at once. Its engineers design "systems that self-organize to anticipate, plan, and adapt in dynamic environments." The objective is to enable a single human operator to control a fleet of various unmanned assets. Potential mission sets include force protection, logistics in hostile environments, maritime strike, and area surveillance, among others. Its designs range from small craft up to a 100-foot trimaran design, dubbed Atlas. The firm says that its technology is already out accomplishing missions, and that it has been demonstrated in GPS-denied environments.
"Militaries will need to be able to fight without persistent connectivity and will need to execute autonomous "combined arms" . . . and detect and engage targets at machine speed with operators on, not in, the loop," the firm said in a statement last year.
In October, HavocAI raised $85 million in a funding round, making it one of the fastest-expanding startups in the space. Its main objectives for the capital raise include integrating its swarming-autonomy stack into even larger vessel sizes and growing its overseas presence in the Indo-Pacific.
HavocAI has not yet sought to buy its own shipyard site, like competitor Saronic, which is pursuing vertically-integrated development; the agreement with Hanwha gives it a road to large-scale production. Together, the two companies will jointly develop a 200-foot ASV proposal to include technical features and mass-production planning.
"The Department of War has sent a clear demand signal to the shipbuilding industry: we need more boats, faster, with more capabilities, for less money,” said Paul Lwin, Co-founder and CEO of HavocAI. “Partnerships like this – pairing a leading-edge technology with an established global infrastructure – are exactly how we achieve that goal.”
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