Norwegian boat builder Windy Boats has become the latest Scandinavian manufacturer of pleasure craft to move production abroad, to combat high costs. Around 50 persons will lose their jobs in the southern coastal city of Arendal when production moves to Poland and Sweden.
“When it costs three times as much to produce boats in Norway as it does in Poland, we didn’t have any choice,” Windy Boats chairman Trygve Hegnar told Agderposten.no. He said that those working within development, design, sales, marketing, quality control and finance would remain in Arendal.
The market for pleasure boats has been weak since the finance crisis hit in 2008, while costs in Norway have risen. Several other boat producers already have moved out of Norway, including Askeladden and Nidelv, while Scand Boats of Grimstad filed for bankruptcy earlier this month.
Nimbus of Sweden has also filed for bankruptcy, with a representative for the industry telling newspaper Dagens Næringsliv (DN) that the boat branch “is undergoing exceptionally tough times.”
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