New vessel construction will return to the Portland Shipyard in the USA for the first time in years under a contract announced Tuesday. New venture U.S. Barge expects to deliver its first ocean-going barge to Young Brothers Ltd. in Hawaii in September 2007. U.S. Barge is co-owned by Vigor Industrial and Oregon Iron Works Inc. The shipyard primarily repairs U.S. military and Alaska ferry vessels.<\/p>\n
The contract to build four barges allows Oregon Iron Works to expand into larger-vessel building. U.S. Barge expects to invest $8 million in equipment, such as a 1,000-tonne gantry crane on Swan Island, and hire about 100 workers.<\/p>\n
Vigor, a holding company for Cascade General Inc. which took over the shipyard when the Port of Portland sold it in 2000, had planned to dramatically expand ship-repair work. Ten months later, he announced that business setbacks had forced him to sell the crown jewel of the yard, Dry Dock 4, to a Bahamas shipyard. The West Coast’s ship-building and ship-repair industry has all but dried up because vessels can be built and renovated more cheaply in China, Korea and elsewhere.<\/p>\n
But Chandra Brown, an Oregon Iron Works vice president, said barge demand is surging, in part because higher fuel prices make barge movement a less costly transportation option. Alan Sprott, a Vigor vice president, said the barge contract marked a milestone in the shipyard’s recent years of struggle. “For a long time, this facility has been underutilized,” he said.<\/p>\n
Seth Hudson, a Portland Development Commission senior economic development manager, said U.S. Barge has applied for a five-year property-tax waiver on new investments. The property falls within in the city’s North\/Northeast enterprise zone.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
If the application is approved by the PDC’s board, the city would waive most taxes on new buildings or equipment. In exchange, the company must offer well-paying jobs and focus on hiring employees from North and Northeast Portland.<\/p>\n
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New vessel construction will return to the Portland Shipyard in the USA for the first time in years under a contract announced Tuesday. New venture U.S. Barge expects to deliver its first ocean-going barge to Young Brothers Ltd. in Hawaii in September 2007. U.S. Barge is co-owned by Vigor Industrial and Oregon Iron Works Inc. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"sponsor":[],"class_list":["post-2384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorship.com\/propulsion-and-future-fuels-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorship.com\/propulsion-and-future-fuels-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorship.com\/propulsion-and-future-fuels-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorship.com\/propulsion-and-future-fuels-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorship.com\/propulsion-and-future-fuels-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2384"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorship.com\/propulsion-and-future-fuels-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2384\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorship.com\/propulsion-and-future-fuels-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorship.com\/propulsion-and-future-fuels-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorship.com\/propulsion-and-future-fuels-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2384"},{"taxonomy":"sponsor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorship.com\/propulsion-and-future-fuels-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sponsor?post=2384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}