Sea Ray Boats calls back 150 workers in East Tennessee
Friday January 29, 2010
About 150 employees have been called back to work at Sea Ray Boats plants in East Tennessee...
About 150 employees have been called back to work at Sea Ray Boats plants in East Tennessee this month as parent company Brunswick Corp. has begun gradually increasing production.
Brunswick spokesman Dan Kubera said that, since Jan. 1, 90-95 workers have been recalled at Sea Ray operations in Forks of the River Industrial Park in East Knox County and 50-55 have been called back at the Sea Ray plant in Vonore. No further call-backs are planned and whether more workers are brought back will depend on how the market develops in 2010, Kubera said.
Kubera said dealer inventories have been reduced to historically low levels, and now need to be replenished. In a prepared statement, Brunswick Chairman and CEO Dustan E. McCoy said the company gradually will ramp up production throughout 2010.
"So while the economy and markets in which our businesses operate may remain challenging for the foreseeable future, this transition requires that in 2010 and beyond, as the world's economies improve, we remain disciplined to: generate positive cash flow, perform better than the market in each of our business segments, and grow earnings faster than we grow sales," McCoy said.
Kubera said that in 2009, retail sale of boats was down 25-30 percent and Brunswick decreased its production by about 65 percent to allow dealers to move excess inventory off the sales floors. He believes the result of such efforts was that in a year in which nationally about 20 percent of boat dealers failed, less than 1 percent of dealers in Brunswick's network failed.
Source: Knoxville News Sentinel
