{"id":115474,"date":"2026-08-11T09:10:12","date_gmt":"2026-08-11T09:10:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/115474\/"},"modified":"2026-08-11T09:10:12","modified_gmt":"2026-08-11T09:10:12","slug":"hanwha-pushes-to-acquire-austal-usa-securing-a-u-s-shipbuilding-base","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/115474\/","title":{"rendered":"Hanwha Pushes to Acquire Austal USA, Securing a U.S. Shipbuilding Base"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>            <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/20260812_01110113000008_L00.jpg\" orgwidth=\"1000\" orgheight=\"563\" alt=\"Hanwha Group is seeking to acquire 100% of Austal USA, the U.S. unit of Australian shipbuilder and defense contractor Austal. The photo shows Austal USA carrying out the launch of the U.S. Navy's next-generation expeditionary fast transport ship, the Lansing, at its shipyard in Alabama in February. Austal USA\"\/>                      \uc0ac\uc9c4 \ud655\ub300                Hanwha Group is seeking to acquire 100% of Austal USA, the U.S. unit of Australian shipbuilder and defense contractor Austal. The photo shows Austal USA carrying out the launch of the U.S. Navy&#8217;s next-generation expeditionary fast transport ship, the Lansing, at its shipyard in Alabama in February. Austal USA<br \/>\nHanwha has moved to acquire Austal USA, a shipbuilder that has built U.S. Navy vessels. Austal USA is the U.S. subsidiary of Austal, in which Hanwha is the largest shareholder. Following its 2024 acquisition of Philly Shipyard, Hanwha aims to secure a base capable of producing combat ships and accelerate its push into the U.S. defense market. Austal USA also produces parts for U.S. nuclear submarines.<\/p>\n<p>On the 11th, Austal received a non-binding, conditional proposal from Hanwha Defense USA, a U.S. subsidiary of Hanwha Aerospace, regarding the acquisition of Austal USA&#8217;s business and related entities. Hanwha reportedly offered between $1.05 billion and $1.2 billion for a 100% stake in Austal USA.\n<\/p>\n<p>Over the next four weeks, Hanwha will conduct due diligence. After that, the deal must also clear approval procedures from Austal&#8217;s board and U.S. regulators, including security reviews by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) and the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency (DCSA), as well as antitrust review under the HSR Act.\n<\/p>\n<p>Hanwha Defense USA said in a statement, &#8220;We are making it our top priority to make a major contribution to rebuilding the U.S. shipbuilding industry, and we are exploring various ways to expand our business base in the United States.&#8221;\n<\/p>\n<p>Austal USA began operations in Mobile, Alabama, in 1999. It now has 3,500 employees and a backlog worth $10 billion. The company operates two shipyards, one in Mobile, Alabama, for new ship construction and another in San Diego, California, focused on maintenance. It has delivered 19 littoral combat ships and 15 expeditionary fast transports to the U.S. Navy and the Coast Guard. Since 2022, it has also partnered with General Dynamics Electric Boat (GDEB) to produce command-and-control system modules and electronic deck modules for Virginia-class and Columbia-class nuclear-powered submarines. The completed modules are sent to GDEB&#8217;s shipyard for final assembly, meaning the company is already part of the highly sensitive nuclear submarine supply chain closely managed by the U.S. Navy.\n<\/p>\n<p>            <img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/20260812_01110113000008_L01.jpg\" orgwidth=\"1000\" orgheight=\"152\" alt=\"\uc0ac\uc9c4\uc124\uba85\"\/>                      \uc0ac\uc9c4 \ud655\ub300<br \/>\nIf Hanwha adds Austal USA, which has shipbuilding capabilities for commercial and special-purpose vessels, to Philly Shipyard, which has experience in building U.S. Navy ships and nuclear submarine modules, it could broaden its business scope in the United States from ship construction and maintenance to the submarine supply chain and create stronger synergies.<\/p>\n<p>Under the current Burns-Tollefson Act, warships and key components must be built at U.S. shipyards. While a partnership or memorandum of understanding alone would still leave much of the construction work to a U.S. shipyard partner, directly acquiring Austal USA would allow Hanwha to meet that requirement on its own and strengthen its competitiveness in bidding. If the acquisition goes through, it is expected to further boost the defense side of MASGA, the Korea-U.S. shipbuilding cooperation project. With the recent opening of the Korea-U.S. Shipbuilding Cooperation Center in Washington, D.C., MASGA is entering a phase in which it has a government-level support system.\n<\/p>\n<p>In 2024, Hanwha attempted to acquire Austal in its entirety, including the headquarters. However, the deal collapsed amid regulatory approval hurdles. Hanwha later bought shares in Austal&#8217;s Australian headquarters and became the largest shareholder with a 19.9% stake. As Austal USA&#8217;s performance has recently deteriorated, Hanwha has moved to pursue the acquisition again.\n<\/p>\n<p>Among Korea&#8217;s top three shipbuilders, HD Hyundai and Samsung Heavy Industries are also targeting the U.S. naval ship market in different ways. HD Hyundai has signed a construction partnership with Huntington Ingalls Industries, the largest U.S. warship builder, and this year has also won maintenance, repair and overhaul contracts for the U.S. Navy&#8217;s cargo and supply ships, the Cesar Chavez and the Richard E. Byrd.\n<\/p>\n<p>Samsung Heavy Industries has established a partnership with MRO specialist Vigor Marine Group and is also working with U.S. shipbuilder NASSCO on the design of next-generation logistics support ships.\n<\/p>\n<p>[Park Seung-ju]\n<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-size: 1.5rem;\">\nThis article has been translated by GripLabs Mingo AI.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\uc0ac\uc9c4 \ud655\ub300 Hanwha Group is seeking to acquire 100% of Austal USA, the U.S. unit of Australian shipbuilder&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":115475,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[7375,59540,355,354,752,8714,15154,553,5002,59541],"class_list":["post-115474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-hanwha","tag-alabama","tag-gdeb","tag-hanwha","tag-hanwha-group","tag-hd-hyundai","tag-nuclear-submarine","tag-nuclear-powered-submarine","tag-philly-shipyard","tag-regulators","tag-virginia-class"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115474"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115474\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/115475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}