Minnesota boat builders busy with surging interest

Published On: February 19, 2021Categories: Industry News, News

A recent Minnesota StarTribune newspaper article reports that major boat manufacturers in Minnesota are scrambling to expand their payrolls in response to surging demand for leisure boats during the pandemic. According to the article, Brunswick’s production facility in New York Mills, Minn., where Lund and Crestliner boats are built, has added 114 positions in the past six months and needs to fill 60 more. Polaris and Winnebago officials say they are going through similar experiences.

Dirk Hyde, president of Lund Boats, is quoted as saying that the scramble for new employees will continue “for two or three more years, for sure. We can look and predict, and we know it’s going to be a while before we can fill that dealer pipeline.”

Brunswick, based in suburban Chicago and the world’s largest recreational boat company, reports that the company is trying to find dozens of additional employees for its facilities in New York Mills along with filling openings in nearly all of its plants in Tennessee, Florida, Washington state, Missouri and Wisconsin. The company’s third- and fourth-quarter net sales in 2020 were up by about 26% over the same period in 2019.