Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro congratulated Hanwha Group today on their acquisition of Philly Shipyard, June 20.
“Hanwha’s acquisition of Philly Shipyard is a game-changing milestone in our new Maritime Statecraft. This will bring good paying union jobs to Philadelphia, a city with a 250-year relationship with the U.S. Navy,” said Secretary Del Toro. “Knowing how they will change the competitive U.S. shipbuilding landscape, I could not be more excited to welcome Hanwha as the first Korean shipbuilder to come to American shores—and I am certain they will not be the last.”
In February 2024, Secretary Del Toro traveled to the Republic of Korea, where he met with top shipbuilding industry executives and toured some of the world’s most technologically advanced and prolific shipyards, with discussions centering on attracting investment in integrated commercial and naval shipbuilding facilities in the United States. Immediately after he arrived in Seoul on February 25, Secretary Del Toro met with Hanwha Vice Chairman and CEO Dong Kwan Kim. The next day, Secretary Del Toro traveled to Geoje Island, where Hanwha Ocean CEO Hyek-woong Kwon led a tour of his company’s shipyard.
“In each of these engagements, I brought to the table a simple, yet profound, opportunity: invest in America,” Secretary Del Toro said at the time. “I was enormously gratified by the strong interest expressed by the leaders of each of these world-class shipbuilders in establishing U.S. subsidiaries and investing in shipyards in the United States.”
Secretary Del Toro has consistently emphasized the economic value of revitalizing U.S. shipbuilding.
“Investment in dual-use shipyards in the United States will create good-paying, blue-collar and new-collar American jobs building the advanced ships that will protect and power the economy of tomorrow,” added Secretary Del Toro.
In remarks at Columbia University in December 2022, Secretary Del Toro first announced his intent that the Department of the Navy would seek to integrate the shipbuilding expertise of some of our allies and partners.
Expanding on this idea as part of his call for a new Maritime Statecraft in a speech at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government in September 2023, Secretary Del Toro declared that the U.S. maritime industry is ripe with opportunity to partner with a greater number of shipbuilders here in the U.S. and with our closest allies overseas, including Japan and South Korea.
In the same speech, he announced his objective to attract the most advanced shipbuilders in the world to open U.S.-owned subsidiaries and invest in commercial shipyards here in the U.S., modernizing and expanding our shipbuilding industrial capacity and creating a healthier, more competitive shipbuilding workforce.
“The Department of the Navy looks forward to collaborating with Hanwha Group in the future to ensure the continued strength of the American maritime industry,” said Secretary Del Toro.
This acquisition aligns with both Secretary Del Toro’s Maritime Statecraft initiative and the Department of Defense’s National Defense Industrial Strategy.