Saronic has broken ground on Port Alpha, a new U.S. shipyard at the Port of Brownsville, Texas, representing a private capital investment of more than $3 billion and a potentially significant addition to U.S. shipbuilding capacity.Situated on 835 acres with an option to expand to nearly 4,400 acres, Port Alpha is being designed to build autonomous, autonomy-capable and manned vessels. Saronic said the project could eventually support up to 10,000 direct jobs.
Windward is publishing intelligence reports on the crisis in the Gulf as the situation develops. From today’s brief:Three Chinese state-linked vessels ran survey work over Pacific cable corridors, covering the Guam cable hub, the Japan to U.S. cables east of Japan, and the Luzon Strait.In northern Europe, two sanctioned tankers that loaded at Primorsk a day apart ran matching drift-and-reposition loiters over the gas pipelines feeding St Fergus, the terminal supplying 25 to 50% of Britain's gas, while two Russian-flagged tugs spent the month over Kattegat and Skagerrak cable corridors
U.S. shipments of limestone on the Great Lakes increased 1.8 percent from last year to 2.7 million tons. Limestone cargos were below the month’s 5-year average by 5.8 percent. Year-to-date, the limestone trade stands at 15.9 million tons, a decrease of less than one percent compared to 2025 and 3.2 percent below the month’s 5-year average.GREAT LAKES LIMESTONE TRADE: SEPTEMBER 2021-2026 AND LONG-TERM AVERAGE (NET TONS) 202120222023202420252026Average2021-2025U.S.
Liskow announced the firm’s expansion into New England and the growth of our maritime practice with the addition of three attorneys: Samuel P. Blatchley, Patrick J. O’Connor, and Michael J. Pluhowski. The addition brings an established fisheries litigation and maritime regulatory practice to Liskow and adds a new office in New Bedford, Massachusetts, the nation’s highest-grossing commercial fishing port for 23 consecutive years, according to NOAA Fisheries.
Evac Group, a provider of integrated water, waste and wastewater management solutions, as well as corrosion protection and marine growth prevention systems for the marine, offshore and land-based construction industries, announced the acquisition of WatMan Engineering, a Finnish specialist in water treatment solutions with a strong focus on marine desalination.Founded in 1995, WatMan Engineering is a recognized supplier of water treatment systems, particularly desalination units for vessels such as cruise ships.
Sofar Ocean unveiled Wayfinder Explore, a suite of tools for fleets that manage voyage optimization themselves. Masters and shore teams get access to the same weather and vessel data that powers routes generated by Sofar’s own routing experts. Initial fleet trials are scheduled to begin in Q4.Voyage routing may be handled by specialist providers or in-house teams. Wayfinder Explore gives operators that keep routing decisions in-house the tools to optimize, edit, and compare voyages themselves.
Siemens Energy has contracted EST-Floattech to supply a battery system of more than 1 MWh for Marco Polo Marine's new CSOV Plus, a vessel designed to work in both offshore wind and oil and gas operations.The Octopus High Energy battery system will support hybrid and dynamic positioning operations aboard the vessel, which is being built by Marco Polo Marine at its shipyard in Batam, Indonesia. Siemens Energy is the system integrator for the hybrid power plant.
Orders for alternative-fuelled vessels reached 168 in the third quarter of 2026, the highest quarterly total in two years, as contracting activity accelerated following a slower start to the year, figures from DNV’s Alternative Fuels Insight (AFI) platform showed.September accounted for 69 orders, the highest monthly total since October 2024, according to DNV’s AFI.A total of 311 alternative-fuelled vessels have been ordered so far in 2026, up 53% from the same period last year.
KOTUG International has acquired a majority stake in Dubai-based Vortex Offshore, expanding its vessel fleet and offshore maritime operations in the Middle East.Vortex Offshore operates 11 offshore vessels in the region and has another four under construction, supporting offshore energy, marine transportation, towage and related maritime activities.The acquisition builds on KOTUG's existing Middle East operations, which include subsea services, vessel management and the management of maritime operations from its regional office in Dubai.
DEME has installed the 68th and final monopile at Vattenfall's 980 MW Nordlicht I offshore wind farm in the German North Sea, completing the project's monopile installation campaign.The milestone follows installation of the first monopile in July and the first transition piece in August. DEME carried out the monopile campaign using its offshore installation vessel Orion.Nordlicht I is located about 85 kilometers north of the German island of Borkum and is set to become Germany's largest offshore wind farm once completed.
American Bureau of Shipping (ABS), HD Korea Shipbuilding & Offshore Engineering (HDKSOE) and Siemens have signed a memorandum of understanding to develop digital twin technology for assessing leak behavior and safety aboard ammonia-fueled vessels.The collaboration, announced at Gastech 2026, will combine computational fluid dynamics analysis with digital twin technology to rapidly predict how ammonia would disperse in the event of a leak.The technology is intended to allow a range of leakage and accident scenarios to be assessed early in the vessel design process.
Integrated Wind Solutions (IWS) subsidiary IWS Fleet has ordered four Skywalker-class commissioning service operation vessels (CSOVs) for a combined firm yard price of around $301 million (€260 million), expanding its owned fleet from six to 10 CSOVs.The four vessels, priced at around $75 million (€65 million) each, will be built by Nantong Rainbow Offshore & Engineering Equipment and delivered in 2029 and 2030 under fixed-price turnkey contracts.