Genmar Buys Fish Hawk From Bombardier

Genmar Holdings, Inc. has acquired the Fish Hawk fishing boat line from Bombardier Recreational Products for an undisclosed price, giving Genmar a total of 18 boat brands.
Genmar said it will move production of the line
to its Sarasota, Florida, facility, the current home of Wellcraft, Aquasport and Hydra-Sports.
The move represents a departure from the outboard boat building business for outboard engine manufacturer Bombardier, and comes only a few months after Bombardier’s announcement of a marketing partnership with an independent boat builders group, the United Marine Manufacturers Association (UMMA).
“By focusing on outboards and sportboats, we choose to be an outboard engine designer and manufacturer rather than an outboard boat builder, making it easier to concentrate on our growing relationship with our OEM outboard boat builders,” said Roch Lambert, vice president and general manager, Boats and Outboard Engines Division.
Genmar CEO Irwin Jacobs said the deal was a can’t miss opportunity.
“First of all, we had a lot of respect for the way Bombardier made this decision,” Jacobs told Boating Industry. “They said, ‘Look, when we did this, we believed there was a need out there for us to build a fishing boat.’ So they built this Fish Hawk line. Then they concluded that they were really hurting themselves rather than helping themselves by trying to compete with their customers out there. So they wanted to purify themselves of this.
“So they called us up and said, ‘Would you be interested?’ Our people looked at it and, frankly, the tooling was nearly new, and it’s a very, very good product. And we needed to get something like that in the size level that it was in, so it was not a hard decision,” Jacobs concluded.
Lambert said his company has seen a steady increase in demand for sportboats, a trend he expects to see continue.
“Our future success resides in that category [sportboats] and in the outboard engine business,” he said.
Fish Hawk boat production augmented the ongoing production of sportboats at Bombardier’s Benton, Illinois, facility, and the company expects no significant impact on its workforce of 450 employees due to the sale.
Bombardier also said it plans to fulfill warranty and service obligations to dealers and consumers on Fish Hawk boats it manufactured.