Oct. 10--PIPESTONE -- More than 200 employees at U.S. Marine in Pipestone learned Thursday that their production facility will be closing in the first quarter of 2009.

The boat manufacturing facility, which produces Bayliner brand boats, is one of four fiberglass boat manufacturing plants that will be closed in the coming months by their parent company, Brunswick Corp. Other plants to be permanently closed are located in Roseburg, Ore., and Arlington, Wash., while a plant in Navassa, N.C., will be "mothballed." Those three facilities are expected to be closed by the end of the year.

Daniel Kubera, director of media relations and corporate communications for Brunswick, said the impending closings are very difficult for everyone at Brunswick.

In a telephone interview Thursday night from Brunswick headquarters in Lake Forest, Ill., Kubera said the closures are the result of a continually declining market for boats.

"The retail market for boats, as you can imagine, has been very challenging -- which is an understatement," Kubera said. "We first started seeing (signs) in late 2005. Retail demand and the whole economic picture has worsened over the last couple of years."

Pipestone was among those chosen to close after thorough and careful consideration, Kubera said.

"Like anything else, nothing's ever simple," he said. "We ... looked at the remaining plant locations -- how close are they to dealers and the supplier base? Do we have enough room in the remaining plants and good suppliers we can rely on?

"It wasn't so much Pipestone's problems or what they had to offer, we just had to make a difficult decision to take capacity out of the system," Kubera added. "It's no reflection on the workforce; it's no reflection on the plant. It just is a very tough, difficult, complex decision that frankly saddens us."

Brunswick will continue to manufacture the Bayliner brand boat, and will move production to a larger plant that can accommodate manufacturing several different lines of boats.

The closing of the four production facilities will remove $300 million of fixed operation costs for Brunswick, Kubera said, in an effort to further downsize the company. This latest round of closings will leave Brunswick with 17 manufacturing plants across North America -- down from 29 plants just a couple of years ago.

"For number of units sold, last year was the lowest total recorded since they started keeping records in the mid '60s," said Kubera. "We were off double-digits for the first half of this year."

Before making the decision to close plants, Kubera said Brunswick put most of its fiberglass boat manufacturing plants on furlough during July and August, including the facility in Pipestone.

"We have, in terms of absolute numbers, reduced the number of boats in our pipeline drastically, (but) when everything is evened out, the pipeline is (still too large)," Kubera said.

Kubera said the company will do whatever it can to assist U.S. Marine's approximately 210 full-time and salaried employees through the plant closure, including possible counseling and outplacement assistance. When asked whether the company would have relocation options available, he hesitated to get anyone's hopes up.

"I don't know how much would be open," Kubera said. "Right now we're trying to keep people as busy as possible.

"We will be very active in trying to make this transition as smooth as possible," he added.

Brunswick entered the boat market in 1986 with the purchase of Sea Ray and Bayliner brands.

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