Now It's Boats and Yachts

Luxury boat builder Tiara Yachts lays off 300 due to slow sales
by Julia Bauer The Grand Rapids Press
Thursday February 26, 2009, 9:48 AM

Holland, Michigan -- Luxury boat builder Tiara Yachts will lay off 300 of its 400 employees for at least a month.

"It's the economy that is largely to blame," said Dave Walsh, director of marketing. "We need 30 days to allow sales activity to catch up with production. We hope that it will."

The temporary layoffs follow a series of permanent cuts last year, when 300 jobs were eliminated. This round is different, Walsh said.
"Based on the slowdown in business, we hope to call all of them back," he said.

Tiara's remaining skeleton crew includes office workers for customer support, and some production workers to complete parts already under way.
The latest layoffs and a steep drop in demand comes after several years of expansion for the Holland company, which invested more than $20 million since 2005 and once employing nearly 800.

Maine boat builders laying off workers Yard owners say buyers have cash, but not eager to let it go in face of uncertain national economy
by Dieter Bradbury Portland Press Herald

Maine's builders of luxury boats are laying off workers and struggling to diversify in the face of a recession that has softened demand for high-end yachts and powerboats.

Sabre Yachts has laid off about 100 people, or half the work force at its boatyards in Casco and Rockland, since November, a company official said Tuesday.

Hinckley Yachts, one of Maine's signature boatbuilders, announced last week that it was laying off 26 workers and might have to shut down its production operation in Trenton if conditions don't improve.

At Lyman-Morse Boatbuilders in Thomaston, the company is investigating blade construction for wind turbines and other projects related to alternative energy, in order to enhance revenue.

Others say their yards are keeping busy on the strength of orders placed before the economy crumbled, but many are casting a nervous eye to the future.

"There's still a lot of people out there with a fair amount of money," said Frank Hull, vice president at Brooklin Boat Yard. "They just don't want to spend it."

Maine has about 70 boatyards that build a diverse array of commercial and recreational vessels, ranging from tugboats and lobster boats to ocean-going yachts and motorcraft.

Anxiety Is Up as Orders Fall at [New Jersey] Boatyards
New York Times, New Jersey Edition
By DUNSTAN A. MCNICHOL
Published: April 3, 2009

“We’re planning on 40 percent less product,” Andrew Davala, a Viking vice president, said recently. “And we’re keeping the lines going at a slower pace.”

Viking, the state’s biggest boat builder, now has a payroll of 800, down from 1,360 a year ago, Mr. Davala said.

Orders for medium-sized boats, the 46-foot to 68-foot models that sell for about $1 million apiece, are off so sharply that Viking is running its production line for those boats at half speed through the summer, he said.

The boat yards at Viking and other New Jersey boat builders, once symbols of the state’s booming economy, are now piling up with unsold inventory, where the gleaming new boats have suddenly turned into million-dollar bellwethers of financial collapse.

In January, Viking and another yacht maker, Silverton Marine in Millville, announced plans to lay off or furlough 742 workers by the end of March. The boatyard cutbacks were two of the three largest layoffs reported to the State Department of Labor in January.

In the last 18 months New Jersey boat builders have eliminated about 1,000 jobs, a microcosm of the surge in joblessness that pushed New Jersey’s unemployment rate to 8.2 percent last month, higher than the national rate for the first time in many years.

“It hurts us, but it hurts everybody,” said John Foster, 43, who was furloughed in February, joining more than 500 other Viking workers let go since last summer in the face of a collapse in yacht sales. “I don’t have any bitter things to say about Viking; they held off as long as they could.”

In nearby Weekstown, Ocean Yachts has been bleeding jobs for two years, said the general manager, John Leek IV. In that time Ocean’s staff has dwindled from 130 to just 50 employees.