Eastern Shipbuilding Group

Eastern Shipbuilding Group started in 1976 as a single yard building commercial fishing boats for its founder, Brian R. D'Isernia, and grew into the largest private sector employer in northwest Florida. The company is American owned and operated, runs three shipyards on the Gulf Coast, and has delivered more than 350 vessels. Its corporate office and the Nelson Street and Allanton yards sit in Panama City, with a third facility further along the coast at Port St. Joe. Around 1,600 people work across roughly 370 acres of waterfront.

The defence chapter is the most public and the most difficult. Eastern won the Coast Guard's Offshore Patrol Cutter contract in 2016 for the first four ships of what became the Heritage class, and it christened and launched the lead ship, Argus, at Panama City in October 2023. Hurricane Michael struck the yard in 2018 and design issues identified by the Government Accountability Office added further delay. The Coast Guard moved the fifth ship and beyond to Austal USA in 2022. Eastern halted work on the programme in November 2025, citing financial strain caused by the conditions of the contract, and in June 2026 the service and the company settled and ended the agreement, with Argus and the second ship, Chase, still expected to be delivered.

Commercial and public sector construction is where the yards now put most of their capacity. In 2025 Washington State Ferries selected Eastern to build three hybrid-electric 160-car ferries under a contract reported at about 714.5 million dollars, the state's first competitive ferry procurement in more than twenty five years, with the first vessel due in 2030. The company is also building the Dredge Donnelly, a Medium Class Hopper Dredge for the US Army Corps of Engineers with Royal IHC as partner, which began construction in April 2025 and had its keel laid at the Allanton yard in January 2026.

The rest of the order book runs to the working vessels the Gulf economy is built on. Eastern has delivered offshore supply vessels, articulated tug and barge units, harbour and ocean-going tugs, crew boats, liftboats and specialty craft, along with research vessels and other one-off designs. Repair, conversion and drydocking work uses the same facilities between new construction jobs. In-house naval architects and engineers handle detail design and production engineering for both government and commercial hulls. The company won the Department of Homeland Security Small Business of the Year award in 2017 and has ranked among the larger defence contractors based in Florida. Hurricane Michael remains the defining event of the company's recent history. The storm tore through Panama City in October 2018, wrecked buildings and equipment at the yards and scattered a workforce whose own housing had been destroyed, and the recovery shaped everything that followed on the cutter contract. Rebuilding took years. Ferry and dredge work now fills the space the cutters left. Port St. Joe gives the group a third building position on the coast, while the Nelson Street and Allanton yards between them cover steel fabrication, outfitting and launch for hulls up to cutter size.