Palmer Johnson, the shipyard founded on the shores of Lake Michigan in 1918, is closing its American operations and shifting all construction to Europe.
The move comes as a result of what the company tells the yachting media is strong interest in its SuperSport series (above). Those yachts are made of carbon composite and featuring hulls fitted with sponsons for more efficiency, stability, and space. Palmer Johnson plans to focus primarily on those yachts at a newly acquired yard in The Netherlands. Newspapers and TV stations in Palmer Johnson’s home state of Wisconsin, however, received a press release yesterday from the yard’s owner, Timur Mohammed, stating, “Our operation and employment levels have continued to diminish, sales have diminished, offshore competitive pressures have escalated, and as a result this action becomes a necessity. We are disappointed and saddened by this business closing and yet realize that there is no alternative.” The statement made no mention of the new shipyard.
One hundred employees are reportedly at the Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin yard at present. The same announcement from Mohammed says that the company is working with local and federal agencies to assist the staff being affected. Some are being offered jobs at the Dutch facility. Palmer Johnson has not disclosed the city, though it does say yacht work will commence there in November. That’s when Palmer Johnson plans to begin transferring all current SuperSport activities. Thus far, the SuperSport series has been built in Norway. The second and third 48 SuperSport hulls will arrive at the new yard in November and next April, respectively. The molds for a new model, the Palmer Johnson 42 SuperSport, will also eventually be shipped from Norway to The Netherlands. Hull number one in that series is under contract for delivery in late 2017.
The all-aluminum construction for which Palmer Johnson gained world renown starting in 1961 will still be in the mix, in the SportYacht series. Palmer Johnson is currently building the third 170 SportYacht, for example, in Wisconsin.
The transatlantic move will have a significant impact on the Sturgeon Bay community. Similar to many yacht builders, Palmer Johnson has employees whose parents and grandparents previously worked at the yard. The move out of the United States is significant, too, given the milestones made in American yachting history and even global yachting history there. When it switched to aluminum construction in 1961, Palmer Johnson was one of the first yards to do so. Within five years, it had delivered the world’s largest aluminum sailing yacht at the time, the 84-foot (25.6-meter) ketch Firebird. Even more significant, Fortuna, the 100-footer (30.5-meter) for King Juan Carlos of Spain, floated out of the shed and into the record books in 1979. She hit 68 knots and remained the fastest yacht in the world for well more than a decade. And, in 1998, the same year that it turned 80 years old, Palmer Johnson launched La Baronessa, the largest all-aluminum yacht built in the United States. LOA: 195 feet (59.5 meters).
Interesting enough, the above-mentioned SportYacht series, introduced in 2004, was highly controversial for her time. The styling was a marked departure from the traditional-looking motoryachts that Palmer Johnson had been building—and the fully custom yachts it had been building, too. The SportYacht series was conceived on a semi-custom basis. To date, more than 20 SportYachts have been commissioned.
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