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Boat Building
Feeding the Demand
Across the state, 100,000 people work building all kinds of recreational boats. But like all manufacturing ventures, boat makers must balance the cost of labor and facilities against the need to ship products to dealers or buyers.
Last year, industry behemoth Brunswick Corp. bought two boat companies -- Sea Pro Boats and Sea Boss Boats -- for $51 million and moved them from South Carolina to the company's newly formed Saltwater Boat Group in Edgewater.
Brunswick also owns the Boston Whaler, Sea Ray, Bayliner, Maxum and Hatteras boat brands, among others, along with Mercury engines, Northstar marine electronics, Attwood marine parts and various other boating companies.
By this summer, a slowdown in business was apparent.
"We have experienced significant declines in retail demand," Brunswick Chairman and CEO Dustan E. McCoy said in July when releasing second-quarter results. "So, we will be reducing further our production levels, leading to a lowering of our earnings estimate for the second half of the year."
A more optimistic note came from Orlando-based Correct Craft, which opened a 216,000-sq.-ft. production facility to replace several buildings along Orange Avenue in Orlando, where the company had operated for more than 80 years. Correct Craft has 356 employees building its tournament-caliber Ski Nautique and Air Nautique boats.
In addition to its production facility, a 137- acre site in east Orlando includes two manmade lakes for testing boats and hosting water-ski and wake board competitions.
In Palmetto, Jupiter Marine International cranked up operations at its new eight-acre production facility. The Fort Lauderdale company joins about 14 other boat manufacturers in Manatee County, where they employ about 1,200. Jupiter expects production ultimately to reach about 200 boats a year.
