The Ketchikan Shipyard returned to work last week under an agreement for a new operator — JAG Ketchikan — to manage the state-owned facility.

Thirty employees were “onboarded” on Sept. 22, with another 10 workers added by midweek, according to JAG Ketchikan General Manager Bergen Wieler.

The first project — work on the Alaska Marine Highway System’s smallest ferry, the Lituya, which runs between Ketchikan and Annette Island — arrived at the yard last week.

The Ketchikan Shipyard is owned by the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority.

The new agreement transfers the operating agreement between AIDEA and Vigor Industrial, which owns Vigor Alaska and had operated the shipyard since 2012, to the JAG Marine Group.

JAG Marine is a Michigan-based firm whose Alaska subsidiary has operated the Seward Shipyard since 2018. “JAG works throughout the United States providing project management services for industrial manufacturing, marine repair and shipbuilding including oceanic vessels, river and Great Lakes-faring vessels,” according to the company’s website.

AIDEA Infrastructure Development Officer Dave Stieren on Sept. 27 confirmed the authority’s new operating agreement with JAG.

Stieren did not have access to details about the operating agreement on Sept. 27.

The future of the Ketchikan Shipyard had been uncertain since a Feb. 28 letter by AIDEA Executive Director Ruaro, notifying Vigor that AIDEA would not approve another extension of Vigor’s operating agreement for the facility. The state agency announced that it would seek a new operator, expressing dissatisfaction with Vigor’s efforts to bring work to the yard.

Vigor’s operating agreement was set to expire on Nov. 30, but it started winding down its work and laying off employees in July.

Wieler outlined JAG’s outlook for staffing and upcoming projects.

“The goal is to be up toward 150-plus employees by November, December of this year to accomplish the upcoming workload,” he said, noting that JAG has multiple awards for National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration projects that are inbound this winter, in addition to the shipyard’s usual state ferry, Inter-Island Ferry Authority and Ketchikan airport ferry work.

He spoke about the company’s interest in hiring back former employees and other locals who are qualified or interested in the trades. “We are hiring back every employee that was laid off who wants to come back to work,” he wrote in a text to the Ketchikan Daily News.