The Zidell Companies are a group of family-owned companies based in

Portland, Oregon Portland (, ) is a port city in the Pacific Northwest and the largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon. Situated at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers, Portland is the county seat of Multnomah County, the most populous co ...

. They include Zidell Marine, a ship construction company which, from 1961 until 2017, specialized in the building of

barge Barge nowadays generally refers to a flat-bottomed inland waterway vessel which does not have its own means of mechanical propulsion. The first modern barges were pulled by tugs, but nowadays most are pushed by pusher boats, or other vessels ...

s, and Tube Forgings of America Inc. In the post-

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

era, Zidell became the largest

shipbreaking Ship-breaking (also known as ship recycling, ship demolition, ship dismantling, or ship cracking) is a type of ship disposal involving the breaking up of ships for either a source of parts, which can be sold for re-use, or for the extraction ...

operation in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

. In September 2016, the company announced that it is preparing to shut down its barge-building business permanently and close its South Waterfront factory in 2017. The company launched its last barge in June 2017.

History

Zidell traces its origins back to 1912, when Sam Zidell (real name – Yeschie Zajdell) migrated to the United States from the small village Smidyn (

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...

) and began selling secondhand machinery in

Roseburg, Oregon Roseburg is a city in the U.S. state of Oregon. It is in the Umpqua River, Umpqua River Valley in southern Oregon and is the county seat and most populous city of Douglas County, Oregon, Douglas County. Founded in 1851, the population was 23,683 a ...

. The following year he moved to Portland, and set up the Zidell Machinery and Supply Company, selling equipment and supplies to the region's expanding industrial base. Shortly after the end of World War II, in 1946, Sam Zidell's son Emery, who now headed the business, purchased the shipyard of Commercial Iron Works in Portland and turned it into a shipbreaking yard, called the Zidell Ship Dismantling Company. With scrap steel in high demand for rebuilding America's industrial base in the postwar period, business boomed and by the 1960s the company, now known as Zidell Explorations, Inc., had become America's largest shipbreaker. In the course of its thirty years of shipbreaking operations, Zidell dismantled a total of 336 ships, including many World War II-era Liberty ships and naval auxiliaries, and some warships. From 1948, Zidell also began to recover industrial valves from its shipbreaking operations and resell them, a business that was eventually spun off into the Zidell Valve Corporation. Zidell Valves was sold in 1997 to Pon Holdings of the

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. In 1955, Emery Zidell also founded Tube Forgings of America, Inc. (TFA), which supplies welding fittings for a wide variety of applications. TFA was the first US manufacturer of carbon steel welding fittings to earn an ISO-9002 certification and is one of the world's largest manufacturers of such fittings today. In 1960, Emery Zidell established the Zidell Marine Corporation, which used steel recovered from Zidell's shipbreaking business to build new barges. Demand soon outstripped the supply of recycled steel however, so Zidell began building barges from new steel. Between 1961 and 2017, when it discontinued its barge manufacturing, the company built 277 barges, varying in length between and . During the final 15 years of production, most of Zidell's barges were

double-hulled tanker A double-hulled tanker refers to an oil tanker which has a double hull. They reduce the likelihood of leaks occurring compared to single-hulled tankers, and their ability to prevent or reduce oil spills led to double hulls being standardized for oi ...

s. At its peak, Zidell Marine was employing 90 workers in barge production at its South Waterfront complex. In 2009, the total was 85, of which about 30 were administrative staff. Since 1996, the company has been headed by Jay Zidell, the grandson of Sam Zidell. In 2010, the grandson of Emery Zidell, Matt French, joined to the company to explore and develop for Zidell Company. In July 2011, the Zidell Company took part in a project to clean up the shoreline of the

Willamette River The Willamette River ( ) is a major tributary of the Columbia River, accounting for 12 to 15 percent of the Columbia's flow. The Willamette's main stem is long, lying entirely in northwestern Oregon in the United States. Flowing northward b ...

. The project budget was $20 million and was directed at capping and removing dangerous contaminants, restoring wildlife habitat, and re-sloping and replanting the banks. Some of the land will be used for real estate development, including

Zidell Yards Zidell Yards is a former industrial waterfront in Portland, Oregon's South Portland neighborhood, owned by Zidell Companies and planned for development. The Lot at Zidell Yards The Lot at Zidell Yards is slated to host outdoor events during the C ...

.Zidell Yards
/ref> Today, Zidell Marine and Tube Forgings of America remain family-run businesses, headed by Emery's son Jay. The companies currently employ some 200 people in the

Pacific Northwest The Pacific Northwest (sometimes Cascadia, or simply abbreviated as PNW) is a geographic region in western North America bounded by its coastal waters of the Pacific Ocean to the west and, loosely, by the Rocky Mountains to the east. Though ...

region of the United States. As of mid-2017, Tube Forgings had 140 employees working in its plant, located on NW Front Avenue near Kittridge Avenue, in Portland's Northwest Industrial area. In September 2016, the company announced that it was preparing to shut down its barge-building business permanently and discontinue use of its South Waterfront property in 2017. Zidell Marine launched its final barge on June 16, 2017. Subsequent removal of equipment from the site is expected to take several months. A separate barge-leasing business is to continue operating.

Footnotes

References

Historical Overview
- Zidell Companies official website.
The Long Haul
- ''South Waterfront Community Current'', Winter 2007 edition.
Zidell Waterfront Property
- Staff Report, DEQ Voluntary Cleanup Program (PDF file 3.4 Mbytes).

- Naval History website.

- Shipbuilding History website.

- Shipbuilding History website.

External links

*{{Commons category-inline, Zidell Marine Shipbuilding companies of Oregon Companies based in Portland, Oregon Privately held companies based in Oregon 1916 establishments in Oregon American companies established in 1916 Manufacturing companies established in 1916 Family-owned companies of the United States