JE Dunn-Alberici JV Breaks Ground on $3.2B Texas Shipyard

A joint venture of JE Dunn and Alberici has broken ground on a $3.2 billion shipyard in Texas built for military contractor Saronic, according to the JV.

The project team calls the facility the first greenfield shipyard constructed in the United States since World War II. That claim places the undertaking in a small historical category: no comparable new-build yard has reportedly delivered American shipbuilding capacity from the ground up in roughly eight decades.

Who is building it, and for whom?

JE Dunn and Alberici formed the joint venture to deliver the greenfield facility. The client is Saronic, a military contractor. The JV released the groundbreaking announcement and the historical comparison, which grounds the project's significance in the contractors' own framing rather than in independent verification.

The $3.2 billion figure represents the reported value of the construction undertaking. It ranks the Texas shipyard among the heaviest industrial investments currently underway in the U.S. construction market.

Why does a WWII-era milestone matter?

The claim that this is the first U.S. shipyard built since World War II frames the project against a long period of industrial consolidation. American shipbuilding capacity has contracted for decades, and new yards of this scale have been absent from the market.

If the JV's characterization holds, the Saronic facility would mark a break in that pattern — a purpose-built yard rising on previously undeveloped land rather than an expansion or retrofit of existing infrastructure. Greenfield status distinguishes it from modernization projects at legacy yards.

The groundbreaking itself is the concrete milestone: site work has started, and the project has moved from planning into execution under the JE Dunn-Alberici team.

What comes next?

Construction will now advance on the Texas site, with JE Dunn and Alberici responsible for delivering a facility its developers describe as the first of its kind in the United States in 80 years. The $3.2 billion program's progress will offer a test of whether new-build shipyard capacity can be delivered at scale for defense-sector clients such as Saronic.