re: Trinity Marine Products about to cut 336 jobs

My apologies, would "steel" plates be more accurate?

Yeah, just a little bit.

That's a good question. I guess unions called them iron workers and the name never changed.

I can shed some light onto this.

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Might want to tell them that. Since they've got an order for 100 more barges.

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From what I understand the Brusly plant also took some of the barges from the Madisonville plant.

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More will come.

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possibly but the market is weak for the barge they are currently building.

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Seems to be an aggressive response by Trinity management, but the oil barge business is definitely slowing down.

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The oil barge market is virtually non existent at the moment.

The tank barge market is doing just fine. Ask Fla Marine, Settoon, Cenac, Enterprise Kirby, and Blessey. They are still moving tons of product. They move more than just oil in those tank barges. Lots of chemicals are being transported up and down the river from Chicago to Nola and from Tampa to Brownsville.

The problem is, is that the market is flooded with tank barges. The 6-7 major tank barge companies started building a shite ton of tank barges about 5 years ago to compete against each other now the market is saturated. We all saw this coming a few years ago.

Once the barge companies start selling off some of their older assets the builders will rebound, but their utilization is still high so they aren't selling many barges right now. Problem with Trinity is that they only specialized in tank and hopper barges. They weren't very diversified. They didn't build any boats.

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Problem with Trinity is that they only specialized in tank and hopper barges.

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aside from deck barges, the vast majority of barges on the River are tank and hopper barges. And a Barge plant is pretty much engineered to produce a certain type of barge. Designed for fast production and volume.

now that being said, some of this crude from fracking has a tendency to eat the barges (and rail cars) up at a faster rate than normal crude. If oil goes back up and fracking becomes feasible again, you may see lots of tank barges produced with new specs designed to handle that sort of oil.

It's the nature of a volatile market and the needs of the fleet. Most of these barges produced have about a 25 year life span (longer if they are kept on a proactive maintenance schedule).

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All true, what I meant by market was on the builders end.

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Gotcha.

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Trinity has been full blast with tankers for years.

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Oh no doubt. Trinity has been building tank barges forever, my point was that there was a tank barge building bubble that began around 8 years ago and really spiked in the past 5 years. We saw the number of barges being built, not just by trinity but by other yards as well. Difference is, these other yards are more diversified and are staying in business because their backlog includes much more than just tank and hopper barges.

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There has been quite a slow down actually.

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Nothing out of the ordinary. Tank barge market is fairly strong compared to the other sectors of the marine industry by way of O&G fields, i.e. offshore, construction, diving, P&A, installs, rig moving, etc..

BTW..Triniaty is doing just fine....the layoffs are just trimming a little fat unilt they ink some new contracts.

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Trinity Industries, Inc. announced earnings results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2015 including net income attributable to Trinity stockholders of $180.2 million for the first quarter ended March 31, 2015. Net income for the same quarter of 2014 was $226.4 million. Revenues for the first quarter of 2015 increased 11% to $1.63 billion compared to revenues of $1.46 billion for the same quarter 2014. “I am pleased with the Company’s performance during the first quarter of 2015. Our businesses continue to create value by utilizing their combined expertise, competencies and manufacturing capacity to produce quality products for a broad range of industrial markets," said Timothy R. Wallace, Trinity’s Chairman, CEO and President. The Inland Barge Group reported increased revenues of $153.1 million for first quarter 2015 compared to revenues of $136.9 million in first quarter 2014. Operating profit for this Group was $27.5 million first quarter 2015 compared to $26.7 million first quarter 2014. The increase in revenues compared to the same quarter last year was due to higher delivery volumes of hopper barges partially offset by lower delivery volumes of tank barges. The Inland Barge Group received orders of $280.6 million during the quarter and as of March 31, 2015 had a backlog of $565.4 million compared to a backlog of $437.9 million as of December 31, 2014.

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like I said, the tank barge market has been flooded, they have been building like crazy the past few years and now its started to catch up to to owners.

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That information is a little dated. Q1 2015 is just before the O&G market totally went in the toilet.

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Oil prices started going to shite in Oct 2014. It's been a year.

Yes when you look at the big picture and how big Trinity is, closing one yard that only builds 2 types of barges, it's trimming fat. It's not like they're doing any repairs or building any other marine vessels to fill the void.

Honestly, this is not a surprise to most people in the industry. We saw it coming years ago.


ETA: it would be a little different if Bollinger or Conrads started closing yards.