Avondale Shipyard
The Avondale Shipyard is a shipyard in the United States . The shipyard is located approximately 20 miles upstream from New Orleans , Louisiana on the western bank of the Mississippi River .
history
The company was founded in 1938, and ocean-going ships were built for the first time in the 1950s. Between 1959 and 1985 the company was owned by Ogden Corporation , then Litton Industries . This was bought in 2001, with Avondale, by Northrop Grumman .
Several warships were also built at Avondale for the United States Navy , including destroyers of the Charles F. Adams class . In the early 1980s, the battleship USS Iowa (BB-61) was extensively modernized there. At times, the shipyard was the largest employer in the US state of Louisiana with over 26,000 employees. In 1996 Avondale landed its first order for a ship of the San Antonio class , six of the seven other ships also went to New Orleans.
In 2010, Northrop announced plans to close Avondale and instead consolidate Gulf Coast shipbuilding at Ingalls Shipbuilding . At this point in time the shipyard employed 5,000 people, and a further 6,500 jobs were indirectly attached to the shipyard.
Web links
- Information on the Ingallswerft homepage accessed on February 23, 2012
- Avondale on fas.org accessed February 23, 2012
Coordinates: 29 ° 55 ′ 26.4 ″ N , 90 ° 11 ′ 6 ″ W.