Southwest Shipyard began in 1954 when our founder, Mr. Henry Hilliard, recognized the need for a Channelview barge fleeting facility to serve Houston’s busy ship channel. As traffic in the ship channel grew, so did our reputation for quality, service, and safety. That reputation now spans seven decades and three generations of family ownership.
Over the years, the company Mr. Hilliard started has changed quite a bit. Today Mr. Hilliard’s grandson, Henry “Hank” Hilliard is Chairman of the Board and Southwest Shipyard has expanded its services to facilitate the needs of our many customers along the Texas Gulf Coast.
While maintaining a reputation for Quality, Safety and Environmental Excellence, we have grown from our early days as a barge fleeting facility, and now provide a wide range of services to the marine industry, including gas freeing and cleaning services, steaming and flaring services, vessel repair and conversion, surface preparation and painting, wastewater treatment and new construction services.
We currently operate four shipyard facilities along the Texas Gulf Coast—at Channelview, Brady Island, Brady Island West and Galveston—all with convenient deep-water access to the Gulf of Mexico.
As one of the largest shipyards and barge cleaning facilities on the Gulf Coast, Southwest Shipyard is equipped to build and repair a wide range of barges, boats, OSVs, ferries and tugs. Our 12 dry docks and rail transfer lines giving us the most out of water repair capability at 22 vessels. In addition, we have 20 dockside slots for ISC/COI annuals and/or above hull repairs.
Our management team and workforce are some of the most highly trained, experienced and dedicated in the industry. Together we are focused on safely providing quality in everything we do, and we take great pride in the fact that we do it all Faster, Safer, Better than the competition.