Great Lakes Yard Goes Global.

The Great Lakes Shipyard, an affiliate of The Great Lakes Towing Company, recently started manufacturing tugboats and barges for the marine industry in its new state-of-the-art facility in Cleveland.

The first tugboat to be constructed for foreign buyers in a U.S. domestic shipyard on the Great Lakes was sold to Electrica SA. of San Pedro Sula, Honduras, Central America. When delivered to Honduras in September, the tug will be used in the Port of Puerto Cortes, a principal port located on the north coast of Honduras at the beginning of the Pan American Highway System connecting Honduras with other Central American countries. This is the first new tugboat ever to be built in Cleveland for foreign buyers and it is the second new tugboat to be built in Cleveland since 1931.

The first tug was completed and sold in April of this year to Tugz International L.L.C. The ''HandySize'' Class vessel has a new advanced ''green'' tug design for harbour and coastal towing. "It is just the right size, just the right power, environmentally sound, fuel efficient and versatile enough to accomplish most tug jobs at the lowest operating cost when bigger is too big and smaller is more than enough," the company said in a release.

Designed in collaboration with Jensen Maritime, Seattle-based U.S. naval architects, the HandySize design fills the market niche in the 2,000-4,000-horsepower tug market for harbour work, fireboats and construction operations as well as for coastal barge towing.

Not new to shipbuilding or to tug operations, some of The Great Lakes Group of transportation companies have been around since the turn of the 19th century. Its tugs operate on all the Great Lakes, all the coasts and in Puerto Rico, Hawaii and Alaska. For many years, it also owned and operated a Gulf shipyard.

"There is a real market need," said Ronald Rasmus, president of The Great Lakes Group. "Studies have shown that there are more than 1,500 U.S.-flag tugs over ...