After laying off about 100 people in the fall, BAE Systems Inc. on Tuesday said it could lay off another 300 of its remaining 700 employees at two Jacksonville area shipyards in March.
BAE operates shipbuilding and repair facilities at Mayport Naval Station and on Heckscher Drive. The London-based global defense contractor acquired those shipyards from Atlantic Marine Holding Co. in 2010.
“The workforce reduction is the result of further reductions in the demand for our commercial shipbuilding and repair services in northern Florida,” the company said in a news release.
“The shipyard also is experiencing reduced demand for Navy repair work at the Mayport Naval Station because of the Navy’s changes to its ship maintenance plan and the reduced number of ships homeported there,” it said.
BAE announced in September it would lay off 200 of its then 800 employees at the two Jacksonville facilities.
“They actually started doing so and stopped, and ultimately laid off 100 of the 200,” BAE spokesman Karl Johnson said.
That left the company with 700 employees combined at both shipyards. Johnson said the 300 jobs that would be cut on or about March 18 will come from both facilities.
BAE operates a total of seven shipyards in Alabama, Florida, California, Virginia and Hawaii.
The company originally came to Northeast Florida in 2007 when it acquired Jacksonville-based defense contractor Armor Holdings Inc. for $4.5 billion.
Most of Armor's big-ticket defense products were manufactured outside of Jacksonville, but it did operate a plant at the Jacksonville International Tradeport that manufactures bullet-proof vests and other law enforcement equipment.
BAE sold that business, which operates under the Safariland name, to former Armor CEO Warren Kanders in 2012.