Port Director Amy Miller found a PowerPoint presentation where she first mentioned pursuing offshore oil and gas production companies as a niche market for the port on Thursday.

It was from 2005.

“We first got (that niche market) here in 2010 when Offshore Inland put in their topshore repair business,” Miller said. “This can be a business that takes a long time for things to happen.”

It was all happening Thursday, with the news that Offshore Inland has a deal with DeepFlex, a company that makes unbonded, non-metallic flexible pipe used in deepwater industries.

The company, headquartered in Houston with facilities in Brazil, will manufacture up to 62 miles of pipe a year right here in Pensacola.

Miller said the company will go into a renovated existing building on the port and develop 3.5 acres of undeveloped port land for the rest of their manufacturing and testing facility.

Site preparation could begin a few weeks, Miller said, with something beginning to come out of the ground within 30 to 60 days.

“They’ve got $45 million of production equipment that needs to have somewhere to go in January or February, so they hope to have enough of a building to have a place to put that,” she said.

DeepFlex’s facility will have everything from custodial and security to production line and engineering jobs, “the whole range of skill levels and job types, from blue collars to white jackets,” Miller said.

“Real jobs that real people here in Pensacola are looking for,” said Lumon May, Escambia County Commission Chairman, who spoke at the event.

The news is particularly welcomed in light of the way manufacturing jobs have declined as part of Pensacola’s economy since the 1970s.

Data from the Office of Economic Development and Engagement at UWF shows that the number of manufacturing jobs in Pensacola fell 56 percent from 1969 to 2014. The national decline in that industry was 36 percent.

Gone with those jobs were the accompanying living wages that helped support families and communities, replaced with lower-wage service-related industry jobs.

“This is a huge win for our city, our county and our region,” Hayward said at the event. “These are good jobs with a living wage that will help strengthen and diversify our local economy.”

The past was invoked more than once at the event. Hayward noted in his speech the many times over the decades the port changed to suit the cargo and industry of the times.

Former mayor and current president of the Greater Pensacola Chamber of Commerce Jerry Maygarden invoked the spirit of one of Pensacola’s most well-loved mayors, Vince Whibbs, in welcoming DeepFlex president Felipe Lamego to the “Western gate to the sunshine state, where thousands live the way millions wish they could, where the warmth of our community comes not only from God’s good sunshine, but from the hearts of the people who live here.”

“You are more than just a job here,” Maygarden told Lamego,. “You are a  neighbor….We thank you for what you do.”

But the future remains to be managed, too.

Miller would not specify what prospects are on the line for the rest of the port’s 23 acres of developable land.  She did allow that there may be promising leads for cargo and offshore industries.

“We see this as a good business niche to attract other related kinds of service providers and suppliers to the area.”

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