Word: genmar
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Enter Irwin Jacobs, the Minneapolis-based financier whose takeover antics in the 1980s struck fear into the hearts of companies like ITT and Disney. Jacobs, a reformed predator, now runs Genmar Holdings, a remnant of his buccaneering days and a company whose principal business is building pleasure boats. Boatbuilding is messy, environmentally hazardous and so unpleasant a job that Genmar has a hard time getting workers to do it. Pyramid built a few test hulls for Genmar, but Kirila's system wasn't refined enough for Jacobs' engineers. "They were 90% there, and we needed 100%," says Jacobs...
...accounts, the gamble has already proved worthwhile. For 25 years, the Genmar factory at Little Falls, Minn., has used the same caustic, grubby process to churn out Wellcraft and Glastron fiber-glass runabouts. Men and women in blue coveralls layer or spray fiber glass over each hull. Half-finished boats are scattered around the warehouse, overshadowed by stacks of used molds. The stench of styrene is overpowering. The manual layering process is so imprecise that each hull is different; imperfections have to be corrected by hand...
...eight hours and at least twice as many people to finish one. Each completely recyclable plastic mold produces a dozen boats; next door it takes a mold per boat, and each year thousands of used molds have to be buried in landfills. Each VEC hull is so strong that Genmar has announced a lifetime warranty instead of the normal five years...
Next month Genmar will unveil the world's first automated boat plant at Little Falls, a sprawling 100,000-sq.-ft. facility that will turn out 10,000 boats a year. Jacobs has invested more than $30 million so far, but no matter. Says he: "This is game-changing technology, period." He and Kirila have been inundated with inquiries from competitors wanting a piece of the VEC action. Other calls have come from the likes of Ford, Volvo, Owens-Corning and Gulfstream. Household-products and construction-materials companies want in too. Elsewhere, advanced manufacturers like Rockwell are experimenting with remote...