Naval Industry

The Naval Pole in the Southern Half of the State received significant contributions during the past decade with the construction of three large shipyards, two in Rio Grande (QGI and ECOVIX) and one in São José do Norte (EBR), which accumulated more than R$ 15 billion in investments received.

At its peak, the sector employed more than 20,000 people (2013) and had around 30% of Brazilian oil extracted from platforms built locally. The creation of a Local Productive Arrangement for the Naval Industry, as well as the Scientific and Technological Park of the Sea – OCEANTEC, equipped local actors with the capacity to quickly qualify labor and prepare suppliers, so that the hub is prepared to construction of platforms, maintenance and repair activities, construction and integration of modules, monobuoys, barges, PSV, AHTS, tugboats and merchant ships.

The specific geographic conditions of Rio Grande do Sul make explicit the gaucho potential in the sector. The Naval Industry is inserted in a considerable coastal extension, comprising more than 50 municipalities. All of the industry's operations can be installed along more than 400 kilometers of waterways – a unique situation in Brazil. The beginning of the process takes place at the Naval Pole, in Rio Grande. It then passes through the Lagoa dos Patos waterway and the navigable rivers of the Guaíba, Jacuí and Taquari system. From then on, it was integrated, also by land, to the Porto Alegre-Caxias do Sul industrial axis. The metalworking, electro-electronics, automation, machinery and industrial equipment centers are located there.

Despite the downturn in the sector as a result of the Brazilian recession in 2015 and 2016, and changes in the demand for domestic content, in the first half of 2023 Petrobras announced its intention to resume the country's shipbuilding industry, which includes new investments in Rio Grande . Transpetro is studying the possibility of building barges in local shipyards to support the logistics of the Alberto Pasqualini Refinery (Refap).