There is a big push in Washington to build up the maritime industrial base, which is struggling to build enough Navy ships and repair the current fleet fast enough. The recently formed North Carolina Maritime Manufacturing Initiative (NCMMI) is trying to make sure North Carolina is part of this.
Earlier this month, I was at a maritime supply chain workshop in Morehead City, at Carteret Community College. This is part of an effort by the North Carolina Military Business Center and partner organizations, such as the NC State Industry Expansion Solutions, to connect military shipbuilding prime and subcontractors with North Carolina businesses interested in participating in the maritime supply chain.
It is focusing on three areas essential to strengthening maritime manufacturing: supplier development, workforce development and advanced manufacturing.
The group previously met in Kinston at the Global TransPark in September. What has given this initiative urgency are strong demand signals coming from Washington. In April, President Donald Trump signed an executive order aimed at boosting U.S. shipbuilding capabilities and the maritime supply chain. Congress has been pushing the Navy to speed up ship maintenance and to develop a strategy for direct investment in the maritime industrial base to address cost and schedule challenges for shipbuilding programs.
There potentially is going to be a lot of money flowing, because the maritime industrial base needs 250,000 more skilled workers over the next decade, and they’re going to need training and suppliers are going to need help gearing up for the work.
States that quickly develop maritime industrial base plans and strategies will probably have an advantage over states that don’t, which is why there is now a lot of activity in North Carolina.
North Carolina has been part of a previous maritime surge. From 1941 to 1946, the North Carolina Shipbuilding Co. in Wilmington built more than 240 ships, mostly cargo vessels, for the war effort, and at its peak employed 25,000 workers. It was stood up quickly by Newport News Shipbuilding, because they needed emergency capacity, and Wilmington was on the Cape Fear River, 26 miles from the ocean. The Wilmington shipyard is now the site of the state port.
Draft goals
A set of draft goals was presented at the workshop by Fiona Baxter, associate executive director of Industry Expansion Solutions and the assistant director of the NC Manufacturing Extension Partnership. These include things like developing market intelligence, and gathering data. A challenge is identifying NC companies that have the potential to be in the maritime supply chain.
NCMBC got a list from the Navy of companies thought to be in the maritime supply chain. There were more than 2,600. “We got rid of all the flower shops, the funeral parlors, and the nail salons,” said Scott Dorney, executive director of the Military Business Center. That left around 460. The NCMBC identified their NAICS codes — what kind of business they did. More research found 4,260 companies, most of them manufacturers, that matched up with these codes. So there are a lot of potential companies that fit the maritime supply chain that aren’t in it.
The Navy says North Carolina has 51 suppliers in the submarine industrial base and 38 suppliers “who are providing significant components for aircraft carriers,” said Dorney.
So, as he put it, “We aren’t starting from scratch.” But “we have a lot of companies that should be engaged in the maritime industrial base.”
That’s why the draft goals focus on matching businesses to prime and subcontract opportunities and launching a statewide “NCMMI Supplier Recruitment Effort.”
Providing help with certifications
One of the goals deals with increasing the skilled workforce capable of working on maritime contracts. Right now, Newport News Shipbuilding, which builds nuclear subs and aircraft carriers in Hampton Roads, is recruiting in a hundred-mile radius in Virginia and northeastern North Carolina. Every day, several thousand workers in the northeastern counties commute to the shipyard. But its supply chain extends well beyond that.
What is needed, according to the draft goals, are more apprenticeship programs and the like, and a marketing strategy that can spread the word about maritime careers, particularly among the 18,000 to 20,000 service members who transition out of NC military bases annually, many of them vets with skills that translate into maritime jobs.
Newport News Shipbuilding
One of the speakers was Sondra Roescher, a small business professional at Newport News Shipbuilding, which is Virginia’s largest employer, with more than 25,000 workers. Newport News buys a lot, not just steel and components for ships, but maintenance services, desks and phones. It has 10 different buying offices for different types of equipment and commodities. In many ways, it is like a private Defense Logistics Agency.
A company that wants to get into the Newport News supply chain should go to the supplier section of the company’s website and fill out a prospective supplier form. You can also contact Roescher at smallbusiness@hii-nns.com.
Other speakers
We heard from folks who are working for the Navy’s Maritime Industrial Base program, including:
- Kerri Engley, Maritime Industrial Base Supplier Engagement Lead, US Navy
- Carrie Hasbrouck, MIB – Workforce Development, Carolinas (NC/SC) Lead
- Savannah Brown, MIB – Strategic Sourcing, Deputy Director/Lead
- Peter Shavoir, MIB – Major Mechanical & Valves/Fittings SME, NC-Based
Hasbrouck is a retired Navy captain who has been active in promoting the state’s maritime initiative. She got me focused on this in April with a presentation at the North Carolina Defense Summit. At the time, she was working at North Carolina for Military Employment (NC4ME), so she is plugged into the workforce part of this.
Engley is based in Currituck County, across the state line from the massive Navy base in Norfolk and the shipyards on both sides of Hampton Roads.
What I learned from this panel is two good ways into the MIB.
“Maritime Industrial Base (MIB) Partner Intake Form:
MIB has an open door to industrial suppliers via our MIB Partner Intake Form, which allows companies interested in partnering with and supporting the MIB to provide their company overview.
Supplier Development Funding (SDF) Cycle:
The SDF Proposal Portal allows all suppliers to directly submit proposals to MIB. The focus of the annual SDF investment is to improve supplier capacity, resilience, and capability in the US industrial base.”
Here is the link for the Maritime Industrial Base Partner Intake Form.
Here is the link for the MIB Supplier Development Funding (SDF) Proposal Submission Form
There was a lot of good information on the slides, which I have linked to below.
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There was a panel featuring business executives in the maritime supply chain that included:
Lindsey Crisp, president & CEO, Carver Machine Works
Rick Evans, product development manager, business development, TCOM
Dan Pead, president and co-founder, Virtus Maritime
James McCoy, armor technical services manager, Nucor Steel
Crisp’s company is in Washington, N.C. I wrote about it two years ago. At the time, Carver was overhauling components that are part of the catapult system that launches jets from an aircraft carrier. Evans company makes aerostats up in Elizabeth City, near the Coast Guard base. I wrote about TCOM 18 months ago. Virtus Maritime is a young company in New Bern that makes manned and unmanned vessels. Charlotte-based Nucor is the nation’s largest steel manufacturer, and McCoy is based at Hertford, where Nucor makes steel plates in a 1.3 million-square-foot facility.
Pead said that most of the land adjacent to waterways here is public, which makes it challenging to do testing in a secure setting without people around. McCoy also said something interesting. There’s a shortage of rail cars, which makes his job difficult. I looked that up. One of the problems that steel manufacturers have is coordinating rail transport. The insight here is that every part of the supply chain impacts shipbuilding, including railroads. If the nation is going to ramp up domestic shipbuilding, it needs to have more than just shipyards. It needs all the supply chain infrastructure that brings stuff to shipyards. It is a reminder that we won World War II in large measure because thousands of logistics people solved difficult logistics problems and bottlenecks. They just didn’t make movies about them.
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We also heard from a couple of business executives who zoomed in: Bob Skillen, founder, VX Aerospace Corporation in Morganton, and Brian Riskas, president, RMD Systems of Fort Worth, Texas.
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Here are the slides from last week’s meeting. If you want a deep dive into this maritime initiative, look at the slides.
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