Saronic breaks ground on new Port Alpha shipyard in Texas

WASHINGTON — Maritime defense tech firm Saronic broke ground today on its new shipyard in Brownville, Texas, known as Port Alpha. 

The company revealed in July plans for Port Alpha — an entirely new shipyard being built from scratch in Texas — and shared that the shipyard will initially occupy roughly 800 acres, with the possibility to expand to a total of 4,000 acres. Saronic has boasted that the yard aims to hire roughly 10,000 direct workers for roles like welding, machining, and will also hire for positions for robotics, software engineering, and naval architecture.

“Port Alpha is designed from the ground up to produce both autonomous and manned vessels at scale, with modularity and throughput shaping the facilities architecture,” Saronic co-founder and CEO Dino Mavrookas said in a statement today. “This is one of the defining engineering challenges of our time, and we are building the team, partnerships, and capital base to meet it.”

Among those who attended the ground breaking ceremony today were Vice President JD Vance and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. 

According to Saronic, its Landing Craft Utility vessels will be built at the new shipyard. Saronic was one of three companies the Navy selected to build the LCU vessels earlier this month as part of a roughly $280 million deal. Deliveries of the vessels, which are designed to shuttle personnel, weapons, and cargo, are expected to start in late 2028, according to the Navy.

“We haven’t even formally broken ground, and we have a contract to build LCU or landing craft utility vessels for the Navy and the Marine Corps,” Mavrookas said during today’s event. “There is a capacity problem in the United States, and Saronic and Port Alpha is solving it.”

Saronic already produces several autonomous surface vessels at its shipyard in Franklin, La. — such as the Corsair that US forces have utilized in recent operations in the Middle East. Likewise, it also makes a medium unmanned surface vessel known as the Marauder, which the Navy said Tuesday it is buying 10 of as part of the service’s MUSV marketplace program.

“Starting January 1st of 2027, three months from now, we’ll have the production capacity to build 20 Marauders per year, and we were actually just awarded a production contract for Marauder from the United States Navy for the MUSV program,” Mavrookas said.

According to Mavrookas, Saronic has invested $300 million for new shipyard infrastructure at the Franklin yard to support production of the Marauder.