Executives plan to develop more ship repair work in Guam

BY MAUREEN N. MARATITA
Journal Staff

Michael Little and Lawrence Ryder are seeing the fruits of their efforts in Guam almost a year after Marunda Private Ltd. opened doors on the island in late August 2024. 

Little is director of business development and external affairs for Marunda, which does business in Guam as Marunda Defense Services Ltd., and is headquartered in Singapore. Ryder is vice president of business development and external affairs for Austal USA, an American shipbuilder based on Blakeley Island in Mobile, Ala. Austal not only builds various ships but secured a maintenance and modernization contract for Littoral Combat Ships. 

In response to potential need, Marunda is readying its position in the Asia Pacific to service not only the U.S. Navy but clients from other nations. 

Guam is a part of U.S shipping lanes but importantly a U.S. territory, Little said. Nevetheless, Marunda is taking a broad approach to the Pacific. “We are highly focused on Guam, but we’re also establishing our capability in Australia.” 

Even without geopolitical tensions, “Guam is uniquely positioned to have a renaissance in the defense industry,” he said. 

Marunda specializes in littoral combat ships. “We’ve just repaired our first two Navy combatants in May and June,” Little said. Those vessels were built by Austal in Alabama and on deployment in the region, with Austal holding the bulk of the maintenance contracts. “Marunda has been the engineering service element that has underpinned Austal’s efforts to maintain the ships,” Little said. “The relationship is incredibly tight.”

The ships were repaired pier-side at Naval Base Guam. Such work can vary from simple jobs to what he says are full repairs that can last from two weeks to a month, Little said. “Our relationship is buttoned up under a compliance effort with the Department of State – a technical assistance agreement, but we are task order driven. The demand signal comes from the U.S. Navy; Austal mobilizes and in tandem we mobilize to support their effort.”

Ryder said, “There’s no retainer; there’s no guaranteed revenue. It’s job to job.” While Austal has an overarching contract work is dependent on task orders, he said. That’s the challenge of making the investment in the ship-building industry, he said.  
More nations are currently deploying Navies to the Western Pacific than previously, Little said. “As a business, the by-product has been more ship repair and maintenance for Marunda. We’ve established a spectrum of bonds … business to business supplier registrations. Especially in our sector there’s strong interpersonal trust and relationships that get built between companies – you’re touching their warships.”

Marunda hopes to build on those relationships, Little said. “We’d like to think because of our credentialling with the U.S. Navy — because we have certain credentialling that the U.S. Navy needs … because of our relationships with defense primes globally that they’ll start looking at Guam more and more to look at ship repair.”

Little said for two years Marunda has been repairing Royal Navy River-class off-shore patrol vessels. The Royal Navy forward deploys these vessels to key areas. “Just last week [the week of July ?] we were on three Indian Navy ships; we were on a Royal Navy [offshore patrol vessel] and were on a U.S. Navy littoral combat ship — all within the span of five days. You can’t ask for a better spectrum of different approaches to maintenance.”

In the next few years Marunda hopes to capture as much U.S. Navy work as it can. I its relationship with the Royal Navy through U.K. Docks Marine Services, to include the HMS Prince of Wales, the U. K’s newest aircraft carrier. Those business-to-business relationships require readiness. “Wherever that carrier goes, you’re responsible for it. You’d better have repair parts in the region,” he said. 

As to Austal, Ryder said that more ships will come to Guam is a positive for his company. “Having four ships in the harbor isn’t necessarily an aberration. That’s what appealed to us as a business case — that there would be more steady business, that the situation in the Pacific will drive more ships to have their maintenance and repair done here in Guam, in a U.S. territory.” 

A flow of work would bring its own growth, he said.

“Steady demand would allow us to make investments in infrastructure, investments in workforce because if [the work] is episodic, there isn’t a justification for re-opening the old Ship Repair Facility,” Ryder said. “Its not an incentive to develop and hire a workforce if you don’t have work for them.”

Little said Guam stakeholders are not yet effectively communicating together. “Everybody has great ideas, but everybody is doing it unilaterally.”  Some U.S. states and certainly areas of Western Australia “define themselves as industrial states and they create defense and aerospace alliances,” he said. “What you’re trying to do is attract the best and brightest of industry and people … but you do bring in academia, but you do bring in non-profits, you do bring in industry and government as a collective entity to build a defense industrial base and to grow a labor force.”

He described labor as a critical element of success. Initially, Little anticipates an off-island workforce coming to Guam. “We will have to bring in our teammates from Hawaii and from stateside for some of our projects. In tandem, he said, “I want to grow my Guamanian based labor force.” Similarly, Marunda’s Singapore workforce also is trained at companies such as Fairbanks Morse original equipment manufacturers. 

The development of the Guam workforce is not that far off.

“My vision would be within the next quarter,” Little said. “Right now we’re in a position to assume a lot of risk and Guam. We have opportunities that are teed up to start being executed late this year or early 2026. We’re still going to have to augment with off-island talent, which is nerve-racking,” he said. “For the most part we’re working in a commercial environment; we have to compete.”

Marunda staff are uniquely U.S. Naval Sea Systems Command certified. “The NAV Sea Certification is vital,” Little said. “Combatants don’t come to Guam because no one is certified to repair combatants until now.”

Military Sea Lift Commands are built to commercial standards under the American Bureau of Shipping, and do not need NAV Sea certified staff to repair them, he said. 

Austal acts as prime contractor. Ryder told the Journal, “We’ve been teamed with Marunda for quite a while in Singapore. The combination of our two companies offers a unique solution for the Navy and we can provide more by teaming up than we can if we came here alone or if Marunda came here alone.”

The two companies have different business models, he said. 

“We’re more focused on the U.S. Navy work, Marunda … is more focused on allied Navies, the U.S. Navy plus our Navy’s Military Sea Lift Command. There’s a complimentary capability that us working together can provide something unique that you can’t get if just one of us is supporting.”

Ryder said that Austral is a varied company with depth. “We can pull more folks in from the states; we have a long history with the littoral combat ship and using what we’ve learned on securing the LCS out here to bring the same model to supporting the other platforms.” 

To grow the ship repair industry in Guam, he said, “You need commitment, you need some capital and you need some depth. We’re teaming up, which makes more sense. It mitigates some of the risk, it gives us complementary capabilities as we try to grow what this used to be in terms of a repair center.”

The first repair opportunities were in May and April, Little said, under Austal USA. “Austal USA was the prime and they engaged us for the engineering services,” he said. 

Marunda’s skills are suited for wherever ships may be in the region. 

“We are an expeditionary mobilization force, so we are used to picking up, shipping our equipment, shipping our manpower to Papua New Guinea or … Southeast Asia,” he said. 

Little said, “Guam will be an active hub for autonomous surface vessels that will be patrolling the Pacific. That will mean mobilization, demobilization and a lot of maintenance. Guam will be a pivotal part of that.

“Maintaining autonomous vessels is front and center in our future as well as advanced manufacturing here on Guam.”

He sees additive manufacturing — on demand manufacturing of parts as a part of future offerings. Austal USA Advanced Technologies manages the Navy’s center of excellence for additive manufacturing, as well as research and development for additive manufacturing design of parts. mbj