Something that strikes me here is that those four big dredging companies are not that big. Sure, they’re pretty big, but it seems like the financial benefits to the US would be much bigger than the costs of running a dredging company. So why haven’t any of the small dredging companies in the US expanded to work on these larger projects?
To some extent, they are, as evidenced by the new 15,000-yard capacity dredge being built now. The US shipping industry is generally slow and expensive, and any investment in more capacity comes with 16 year lead times on deploying it, along with the looming worry (from the dredge company’s perspective) that the Dredge Act gets repealed. Given the costs and risks, it might be that their business analysis favors mostly a slow and steady and profitable emergency-to-emergency approach to dredging, rather than an attempt to scale up and do lots more business.
Something that strikes me here is that those four big dredging companies are not that big. Sure, they’re pretty big, but it seems like the financial benefits to the US would be much bigger than the costs of running a dredging company. So why haven’t any of the small dredging companies in the US expanded to work on these larger projects?
To some extent, they are, as evidenced by the new 15,000-yard capacity dredge being built now. The US shipping industry is generally slow and expensive, and any investment in more capacity comes with 16 year lead times on deploying it, along with the looming worry (from the dredge company’s perspective) that the Dredge Act gets repealed. Given the costs and risks, it might be that their business analysis favors mostly a slow and steady and profitable emergency-to-emergency approach to dredging, rather than an attempt to scale up and do lots more business.