Saronic Franklin Shipyard Expansion, Louisiana

The Saronic Franklin shipyard expansion is a $300 million test of whether autonomous warships can be built the way the Gulf Coast has always built workboats: quickly, in volume, on a bayou. In August 2026 the JE Dunn and Alberici joint venture set the final structural beam, about nine months after the November 2025 groundbreaking.

The yard isn’t new. Saronic bought it from Gulf Craft in April 2025, picking up nearly 100 acres in Franklin, St. Mary Parish, and a builder with roughly six decades of vessel work behind it. Saronic kept the 35 people already on the payroll. By December 2025 the headcount had passed 100.

Project Scope

The expansion adds more than 300,000 square feet to the existing footprint. That covers three new slips, more warehouse space and a dedicated production line for Marauder, Saronic’s autonomous surface vessel. Company material lists Marauder at both 150 and 180 feet. The expansion releases use the larger figure.

JacobsWyper Architects, P2S and KPFF make up the design side, and the builders credit KPFF as design partner. Hillsdale Fabricators, an Alberici company, fabricated the structural steel. The JV says self-performed work and early buys on critical materials held the schedule, and the site workforce peaked at about 200.

Louisiana Economic Development is putting in a $2 million performance-based grant and $3 million from its Economic Development Award Program for facility and infrastructure work, plus LED FastStart training. Saronic is also expected to use the state’s Quality Jobs program.

Why It Matters

U.S. naval shipbuilding runs through a few large yards, and several Navy programs are running behind schedule. Saronic’s argument is that small and mid-sized unmanned hulls can come off a production line at a rate no traditional yard has tried. Franklin is where that claim gets tested first. When it bought the yard, the company talked about building up to 50 ships a year here.

The jobs math deserves some caution. LED’s release counts 1,500 direct jobs at an average salary of $87,936 and 1,770 indirect jobs, while its headline rounds the total to 3,200. Those are projections at full employment for a yard that had about 100 workers on announcement day.

The finish date has drifted, too. The state said construction would wrap at the end of 2026. The JV’s August release says early 2027. That’s still fast for 300,000 square feet of marine industrial space, and this yard has to prove the model before Saronic’s much bigger Port Alpha plan in Brownsville gets built.

Project Team & Details