A performance agreement between the Greater Brownsville Incentives Corporation and Port of Brownsville ship recycler SteelCoast Company LLC is expected to produce at least 90 additional jobs within one year for a total of 300 jobs in the near future.
GBIC announced the incentive agreement on Aug. 19. SteelCoast, which currently employs 170 workers, will expand its operations through the purchase of more than $2 million in additional equipment that will increase the company’s capacity for recycling massive, decommissioned Navy vessels. Under the agreement, the company will get $3,000 per job for every job it creates within one year, or $270,000 if the company creates all 90 jobs, said Ramiro Aleman, GBIC’s director of business recruitment, retention and expansion.
“It’s important to note that it’s a performance-based agreement,” he said. “They don’t get it unless they create the jobs.”
Aleman said helping companies that are already in the area grow faster is central to GBIC’s mission.
“We consider it as economic gardening, because we grow what’s already here,” he said. “We look for those companies that are good to their employees.”
In other words, companies that provide a good wage, training and opportunities for advancement within the organization, Aleman said.
SteelCoast is “exactly the kind of company we’re looking for,” he said.
Helen Ramirez, GBIC’s CEO and executive director, said the expansion “will also allow them to better maximize their entire yard.” SteelCoast is located on 80 acres paralleling the Brownsville Ship Channel formerly the home of Esco Marine, which filed for bankruptcy in 2015.
Alberto Garcia, chief financial officer for SteelCoast, said the partnership with GBIC has been effective “because we share the same vision for success for Brownsville and the citizens to make it all work.”
GBIC board Chairman John Cowen Jr. said the majority of SteelCoast’s new hires will be residents of Brownsville, and that the on-the-job training the company provides “will up-skill our Brownsville workforce.”
Aleman said GBIC will soon announce a second tenant for the 73-acre North Brownsville Industrial Park, which sat empty for years before GBIC signed an agreement earlier this year with Excel Bobbins & Plastic Components, a plastic-injection molding manufacturer now in the process of building a 30,000-square-foot manufacturing facility at the park. GBIC is also in talks with a potential third tenant for the park, Aleman said.
