Operators
Operators of Metal Shark Boats:
Metal Shark Boats is an American developer and builder of aluminum-hull vessels that operates shipyards in Jeanerette and Franklin, Louisiana. [1] It offers a variety of vessels ranging from commercial transportation to specialized law enforcement and military applications.
The company was founded as Gravois Aluminum Boats in 1986, building primarily small recreational vessels. As sales declined Gravois incorporated Metal Shark in 2005 with the goal of attracting governmental and commercial clients. [2] [3] The company operated out of its Jeanerette facility, building boats up to 60 feet (18 m) in length primarily for government agencies, notably a $192 million contract for almost 500 small response boats for the United States Coast Guard. [4]
In January 2014, Metal Shark announced that it had purchased a 25 acres (0.10 km2) site in Franklin, Louisiana on the Charenton Bypass Canal and planned to establish a second shipyard there with the capacity to construct vessels up to 250 feet (76 m) in length. The facility opened in July 2014. [5] In December 2014, Metal Shark reached an agreement with the Damen Group to market and build Damen-designed ships. [6] As of 2016, Metal Shark had built about a thousand vessels for operators around the world. [7]
Metal Shark won the $54 million contract to build 13 Defiant-class patrol vessels, under the supervision of the US Navy, intended to be given the USA's Caribbean neighbours. [8] [9] [10] The class of vessels is based on the Damen Stan 2606 design—the same design nearby rival Bollinger shipyards used for the US Coast Guard's very successful Marine Protector class of cutters. [11]
Metal Shark manufactures a smaller class of 38 feet (12 m) patrol vessels, also called the Defiant class. [12] Metal Shark delivered the first of several Defiant class vessels to Senegal and Cabo Verde in February 2018. Those vessels were gifts from the USA.
Operators of Metal Shark Boats:
A patrol boat is a relatively small naval vessel generally designed for coastal defence, border security, or law enforcement. There are many designs for patrol boats, and they generally range in size. They may be operated by a nation's navy, coast guard, police, or customs, and may be intended for marine, estuarine, or river environments.
The Marine Protector-class patrol boat is a type of coastal patrol boat of the United States Coast Guard. The 87-foot-long (27 m) vessels are based on the Stan 2600 design by Damen Group and were built by Bollinger Shipyards of Lockport, Louisiana. Each boat is named after sea creatures that fly or swim.
The Damen Group is a Dutch defence, shipbuilding, and engineering conglomerate company based in Gorinchem, Netherlands.
The Sentinel-class cutter, also known as the Fast Response Cutter due to its program name, is part of the United States Coast Guard's Deepwater program. At 154 feet (46.8 m), it is similar to, but larger than, the 123-foot (37 m) lengthened 1980s-era Island-class patrol boats that it replaces. Up to 66 vessels are to be built by the Louisiana-based firm Bollinger Shipyards, using a design from the Netherlands-based Damen Group, with the Sentinel design based on the company's Damen Stan 4708 patrol vessel. The Department of Homeland Security's budget proposal to Congress, for the Coast Guard, for 2021, stated that, in addition to 58 vessels to serve the Continental US, they requested an additional six vessels for its portion of Patrol Forces Southwest Asia.
The Defender-class boat, also called Response Boat–Small (RB-S) and Response Boat–Homeland Security (RB-HS), is a standard boat introduced by the United States Coast Guard in 2002. The boats serve a variety of missions, including search and rescue, port security and law enforcement duties and replaces a variety of smaller non-standard boats.
The Khulna Shipyard Limited(Bengali: খুলনা শিপইয়ার্ড লিমিটেড) is a Bangladeshi state owned defense contractor based in Khulna, Bangladesh. It is located on 68.97 acres (27.91 ha) of land at Labanchara, Khulna, Bangladesh. It is about 45 km north from the Port of Mongla. The shipyard has the capacity to build steel / aluminium ships up to 90 m length and 700 tons lightweight. The shipyard has a slipway with a capacity to dock and undock vessels up to 700 tons lightweight and overall length of 84 meters.
The Ukrainian patrol vessel Sloviansk (P190) was an Island-class patrol boat of the Naval Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Originally named USCGC Cushing when in service with the United States Coast Guard, the vessel was acquired by Ukraine in 2018 and arrived in Ukraine on 21 October 2019. Sloviansk was sunk in combat on 3 March 2022 by a Russian air-to-surface missile.
The Dutch shipbuilding firm The Damen Group, designs and manufactures a wide variety of vessels, including a range of related patrol vessels known generally as the Damen Stan Patrol vessels.
Bollinger Shipyards is an American constructor of ships, workboats and patrol vessels. Its thirteen shipyards and forty drydocks are located in Louisiana and Texas. Its drydocks range in capacity from vessels of 100 tons displacement to 22,000 tons displacement. The firm was founded in 1946.
Sana'a was a patrol boat built at Bollinger Shipyards for the Coast Guard of Yemen. She has one sister ship, Aden. The vessels use the same design as the United States Coast Guard's Marine Protector-class patrol boats. US vessels are, in turn, based on the Damen Stan 2600, designed by Damen Group.
The Ecuadorian Navy is an Ecuadorian entity responsible for the surveillance and protection of national maritime territory and has a personnel of 9,400 men to protect a coastline of 2,237 km which reaches far into the Pacific Ocean. The vessels are identified by a ship prefix of B.A.E.: Buque de la Armada del Ecuador or L.A.E.: Lancha de la Armada del Ecuador.
The Damen Stan 2600 is a line of patrol vessels built or designed by Netherlands shipbuilding firm the Damen Group.
The Dutch shipbuilding firm The Damen Group, designs and manufactures a range of patrol vessels, of various sizes, including the Damen Stan 4207 Patrol Vessels. The Damen Stan patrol vessel designs' names include a four digit code, where the first two digits are the vessel's length, in metres, and the second two digits are its width.
Baltic Workboats AS is an Estonian shipbuilding company with shipyards in Nasva, Estonia and Tampa, Florida, the United States. Baltic Workboats has built more than 200 different sized boats and vessels for pilots, coast guards, police, fishery inspections, research institutes and several harbors.
The Qatari Emiri Navy (QEN), also called the Qatari Emiri Naval Forces (QENF), is the naval branch of the armed forces of the State of Qatar.
The United States is building 13 small patrol vessels, based on the Damen Stan 2606 patrol vessel design, for small Caribbean nations, to be known as the Defiant class. The United States Navy, which will play an oversight role in the ship's construction, also calls the design Near Coastal Patrol Vessels. The $54 million contract was awarded to Metal Shark Boats of Louisiana.
Iliria-class patrol vessels is an Albanian Coast Guard class of patrol vessels, that is based on the Damen Stan 4207 patrol vessel design. The first ship of this class Iliria, from which the class takes its name, was produced in Gorinchem, Netherlands by Damen Group and was commissioned in 2008. The other three vessels were built locally starting from 2009 to 2014 in Albania by the state-owned Pashaliman Shipyard. Over a dozen navies, coast guards and other government agencies operate vessels based on this design. While some of those vessels are equipped for purely civilian patrols, the Albanian ships are armed with a remote-controlled 20mm Nexter M621 NARWHAL cannon.
USCGC Terrapin (WPB-87366) is a United States Coast Guard ship of the Marine Protector class. She is assigned to Coast Guard District 13 and is home-ported at Bellingham, Washington. Her main areas of responsibility are the San Juan Islands, the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and Puget Sound. Her missions include search and rescue, law enforcement, and homeland security.
Privately held, Metal Shark keeps its revenue figures close to the vest. Stickles declined to say what revenue is, but certainly Metal Shark would fall within ABiz's annual list of the Top 50 Private Companies in Acadiana. Yet the company had humble beginnings as Gravois Aluminum Boats in the mid 1980s.
Under the terms of the FMS, Metal Shark is building up to 13,85ft Defiant class welded aluminium cutters for the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica, Guatemala and other US partner nations.
The Metal Shark boats are a version of Damen's Stan Patrol 2606 design, so nominally 26 meters long and 6 meters of beam, but according to the Website, 87′ length overall with a beam of 19'6″. The Marine Protector Class were also a Damen 2600 series design, so the two classes share a great deal of DNA.
The two 38 foot (11.5 m) Defiant class patrol boats were handed over to the Senegalese Navy during a ceremony on 8 February 2018 in Dakar, Senegal. The donation included boat repair and maintenance kits, and towing vehicles, and a two-week training session on the use and maintenance of the vessels.
