Family-owned Myer Marine Services announced this past week that it is expanding its west Mobile facility by more than 50 percent, a growth push that will add 50 new jobs over the next several years.
The company’s $5.5 million investment will add 36,000 square feet to its existing manufacturing facility while also bringing several adjacent buildings and properties into its footprint. The expanded space is expected to let Myer Marine broaden its services and capacity through additional equipment.
As part of the expansion, the company plans to convert a recently purchased 12,000-square-foot building into a new home for its engineering department, sales team and administrative staff, separating those functions from the manufacturing floor.
Eight straight years of growth
Myer Marine Services President David Myer said the investment builds on the company’s broader ambition to become a leader in steel fabrication and machining. “Since our founding in 2013, we have been very blessed to have continued steady growth for eight straight years, thanks to our talented and dedicated team of employees. We look forward to what is next,” Myer said.
Eight consecutive years of growth is a record most small manufacturers would envy, particularly given what the broader economy has thrown at industrial businesses over that span. The company’s trajectory from startup to 121 employees in under a decade tracks with the demands of its customer base: steel fabrication, machining and field services work that cannot be outsourced overseas and must be delivered close to the job site.
The family character of the business runs through its leadership. Alongside David Myer as president, Bradley Myer serves as vice president of business development, and the company has framed its expansion as a continuation of the family’s investment in Mobile rather than a departure from it. That framing matters in a city where family-owned industrial firms have long formed part of the backbone of the port economy.
What the expansion adds
The physical growth plan is substantial. Adding 36,000 square feet to the existing manufacturing facility increases production capacity for the heavy steel work at the company’s core, and the acquisition of several adjacent buildings and properties consolidates a campus that can grow around the core plant rather than scattering operations across the city.
New equipment funded through the $5.5 million investment is expected to broaden the services Myer Marine can offer, an important distinction from simply doing more of the same work. Fabrication and machining shops that expand their equipment lists can take on jobs they previously had to turn away or subcontract, which keeps customers from needing a second vendor and deepens the company’s role in regional supply chains.
The conversion of the 12,000-square-foot building into office space for engineering, sales and administration reflects a maturing organization. Separating technical and administrative staff from the manufacturing floor gives engineers room to work alongside drawings and customer files, gives sales staff a proper base for client relationships, and leaves the production areas free to expand without office functions competing for the same square footage.
Customers in dredging and construction
Bradley Myer, the company’s vice president of business development, said customer growth in the dredging and construction industries has been a particular driver behind the expansion.
Both industries put Myer Marine at the center of the Gulf Coast’s most persistent infrastructure demands. Dredging keeps the region’s ports, waterways and harbors functioning, and the equipment that industry depends on requires heavy steel fabrication, machining and field repair of exactly the kind Myer Marine provides. Construction, meanwhile, has run hot across south Alabama for years, from industrial projects along Mobile’s waterfront to the commercial and residential boom spreading across Baldwin County.
Field services, the third leg of the company’s business, send its crews to customer sites rather than waiting for work to arrive at the shop, a capability that matters enormously to marine and construction customers whose equipment cannot easily be moved. The expansion strengthens all three legs at once: more fabrication capacity, more machining capability, and a larger administrative and engineering base to support the crews in the field.
Founded in 2013, the steel fabrication, machining and field services company currently employs 121 people and serves clients throughout the Southeast.
Mobile Area Chamber of Commerce Vice President of Economic Development David Rodgers praised the company’s trajectory. “The Myer family has the vision and drive to reach their goals, and because of that the company’s growth is ahead of schedule. It’s so rewarding to help a local company transition from a small business to a major competitor in their industry,” Rodgers said.
Rodgers’ comments capture a dynamic economic developers prize: growth that comes from within. Landing a new out-of-town plant draws headlines, but the expansion of a homegrown company keeps ownership, profits and decision-making rooted in the community while adding jobs that cannot be lured away. The Chamber’s support for Myer Marine’s expansion reflects that logic, and the company’s rise from a 2013 startup to a 121-employee fabricator serving the entire Southeast illustrates the scale such firms can reach.
What 50 new jobs mean for west Mobile
The 50 new positions Myer Marine plans to add over the next several years represent meaningful payroll for west Mobile and the wider metro area. Manufacturing and fabrication jobs tend to pay above the regional service-sector average, and they support additional employment indirectly through suppliers, transport and the local businesses that workers patronize.
The roles will span the company’s operations: skilled fabricators and machinists for the expanded production floor, engineers and support staff for the new office building, and field service technicians to keep pace with the dredging and construction customers driving the growth. Training pathways for welders and machinists have expanded across the region in recent years, giving the company a hiring pool that did not exist when it was founded.
The timing also matters. South Alabama’s industrial economy has been growing along its waterfront, with shipbuilding, aerospace and port activity all competing for skilled labor, and each major expansion raises the region’s profile as a place where heavy industrial careers are available without leaving the Gulf Coast.
A big week for local business news
Myer Marine’s expansion wasn’t the only local business news to make headlines in recent days, as Mobile’s entrepreneurial community continued to draw attention beyond the city limits. A local skincare entrepreneur, among others, has been getting national attention for a business built right here in Mobile, a reminder that the city’s economy is diversifying beyond its traditional industrial base.
Together, stories like these sketch the picture economic developers like to present of Mobile: a port city with a deep bench of industrial capability, from fabrication shops to aerospace plants, alongside a younger layer of consumer startups finding national audiences. The two feed each other, since growing companies of every kind draw workers, suppliers and investment to the metro area.
For Myer Marine, the next several years will test the bet it has just made. The $5.5 million expansion, the 50 new hires and the consolidated west Mobile campus all presume continued demand from the dredging and construction customers whose growth drove the decision. Given eight straight years of increases and a Southeast full of waterways to dredge and projects to build, the company’s leadership clearly likes its odds. As David Myer put it, the family is looking forward to what is next.
Marine services on a working waterfront
The company’s name describes its niche precisely. Marine services firms occupy a specialized corner of the metal trades, building and repairing equipment that must survive saltwater, heavy loads and continuous use: barge components, dredging machinery, dock hardware, winch parts and the structural steel that goes into waterfront installations. The work demands tolerances and materials knowledge that general fabrication shops do not always carry, which is why customers along the Gulf Coast depend on specialists.
Mobile’s position near the mouth of one of the nation&rsquo busiest inland waterway systems puts west Mobile within practical range of that entire customer universe. Dredging companies work the rivers and ship channels that feed the Port of Mobile, and their fleets require constant fabrication and repair support, work that Myer Marine’s field crews and shop floor are built to deliver.
The expansion’s additional equipment will let the company take on larger and more complex jobs in that market, deepening relationships with customers who currently split their orders among multiple vendors. In the metal trades, the shop that can handle the whole job usually keeps the customer.
The region’s industrial momentum
Myer Marine’s growth rides a broader wave of industrial expansion in south Alabama. The region has attracted successive waves of major manufacturing investment over the past two decades, and each large employer creates a supply chain of smaller firms, fabricators, machinists, maintenance providers and field service companies, that keeps the big plants running and feeds their construction.
Fabrication and machining firms are the connective tissue of that economy. When a shipyard needs a specialized component on short notice, when a plant needs a replacement part machined overnight, or when a dredge damages equipment in the field, the local shop that can solve the problem becomes indispensable. Myer Marine’s eight-year climb suggests it has become exactly that kind of vendor for its customers.
The Chamber’s economic development team has pointed to this supplier ecosystem as one of Mobile’s competitive strengths: a company considering a Gulf Coast location wants to know it can find skilled trades support nearby, and every expansion by a firm like Myer Marine strengthens that answer. The 50 new jobs are not just positions at one company; they are additions to a labor market that supports the region’s entire industrial base.
Serving the Southeast from Mobile
With clients throughout the Southeast, Myer Marine competes in a regional market where proximity matters. Steel is heavy, freight is expensive, and marine and construction customers need repairs on their schedules, not a vendor’s. A Mobile shop with field service capability can reach the ports, rivers and job sites of Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and the Florida panhandle faster and cheaper than competitors farther inland.
That regional reach is what makes the capacity expansion significant beyond west Mobile. The additional 36,000 square feet and new equipment are aimed at demand that already exists across multiple states, and the new engineering and administrative building gives the company the professional infrastructure to manage larger contracts with larger customers.
From a 2013 founding to a $5.5 million expansion in eight years, Myer Marine’s story follows a path familiar to Mobile’s older industrial families but achieved at startup speed. If the next eight years match the last eight, the company’s west Mobile campus will keep growing, its workforce will pass 170, and the family’s ambition to lead in steel fabrication and machining will look less like a goal and more like a description.