Low kiwi sinks Bay boat workers

By Graham Skellern
Rising costs of materials, lack of skilled labour and slow local sales have forced a leading Western Bay boatbuilder to shift its manufacturing operations across the Tasman.
Oliver Marine International, which has built launches in Tauranga for 70 years, has formed a joint venture with Mustang Marine on the Gold Coast.
Mustang, Australia's second largest launch manufacturer, has been contracted to build the Oliver flybridge sports fisher boats under its brand, leaving 32 of the 38-strong staff in Tauranga redundant.
Twenty-four workers were laid off this week and over the next month the Oliver workforce will be reduced to a research and development team of six. Some of the staff are staying on to finish a Royale 390 launch for a Tauranga owner.
Oliver managing director Chris Heaton was confident his skilled workers would find employment with other boatbuilders and fibreglass companies in the Western Bay and Auckland.
"Three companies phoned me yesterday offering jobs for 10 staff," said Mr Heaton, who became a 50 per cent shareholder in the troubled Oliver Marine two-and-a-half years ago.
"I'm pretty confident everyone will get jobs within a week. There's negative unemployment out there for skilled tradesmen. Even if we were capable of building more boats here, we would have really struggled to find extra staff."
Mr Heaton said half a dozen of his staff will be taking up positions with Mustang, which builds sports cruisers and complements Oliver's range. All the Oliver staff were offered jobs at Mustang.
Four other Oliver fishing launches are under construction at the Maleme St workshop and they will be transported to Australia and completed at the Mustang facility - two of them are for Spanish and New Caledonian owners.
Oliver's prices range from $650,000 for a 37-footer to $2 million for a 58-footer, and the firm has two other orders.
"The irony is we have never been busier - five boats under construction and two waiting to start - but we are struggling to be profitable. The number of sales for production boats in New Zealand is simply not high enough - we have been lately doing 12 a year and we need to do 25."
He said when the NZ dollar was strong the company could get by. But the costs of the imported materials had gone up 15 per cent because of the weakening dollar and this has eroded profit margins.
"Even though we have made a lot of progress over recent years we can't continue in our present situation. We build very good boats but Mustang has the numbers and the lean manufacturing systems."
He said it was no different to a company that moves its operations to China. "We are moving to Australia and using the Mustang brand for distribution."
Three generations of Olivers ran the boatbuilding business for 65 years until it went in to voluntary liquidation in January 2002. A new group of four shareholders bought the business and carried on the Oliver name, with production moving between six and eight boats a year up to 2004 and then 12 a year.
In tomorrow's Bay Times: Where to now for Oliver Marine workers?