Bertram factory now a movie studio.

I think I still have the listing agents prospectus package on it along with my field trip images. We looked at the property when it came on the market. It was kind of eerie walking around with a haunting of nautical history still floating around. It was a great location for a lot of different things but a film studio, I would have never guessed.

So, does anyone have any idea.....

what's going to happen if/when the market turns around and yacht building begins again? Hattaras going to start building in China? South America? This is truly a heartbreaker.

bertram has/had a plan to move to NE Florida or NC

Ooops! It was late, I was groggy, and I got confused. Mea culpa. So does this mean Bertram has ceased production, or what? See? I'm still confused.

As the Factory is sort of on the way to the Triumph shop, I rode past today and was amazed by how full the parking areas were (with, yes, movie people), yet the outside areas where boats are normally shuffled around is akin to a ghost town. No activity in the marina, bay doors closed up tight...no aromas of styrene! Their international sales guy just left.

From all indications, production over the past year amounted to a dozen +/- boats completed: the 80, a few 63s, some 50-foot class product; that likely won't pay the light bill.
Sad.

Loren, honestly, you should be elated and quite thankful for the missing smell, now that our trusted government has listed styrene as "reasonably anticipated" to be a carcinogen.
How do you anticipate a form of cancer, just by pre-naming it stryrenoma?

So how is Bertram doing "officially speaking"? Any relevant announcements or something?

Ah, the old 20 Sportsman as it was known....
Back during the 1981/1982 recessions, Bertram did exactly what you suggested--reintroduced the 26 (until then, the 28 was the least expensive model) with twin 185 inboards as well as twin 150 outboards to get buyers into the fold. And, boats were sold!
Problem was, as one of the accountants explained, nothing less than a 36-footer ( or thereabouts) would allow for a profit.

The brand has great value and will somehow prevail, if not in it's current iteration, then in some form that harkens back to the glory days. Just like my Triumph Bonneville.

The movie people are building a scale pool and cabanas that replicate The old Fontainbleau Hotel for a cable series about the "Rat Pack" days of Miami Beach.

Bertram has consolidated into a couple of buildings and is hard at work on a 64 to debut at the coming FLIBS.

Nice 20 Bertram pic!

remember Bertram race boats of the early 70's? I'll try and dig up a pic

360, and 450 have been stopped in production.
While 410 now available with a lower helm front windhsield, and 511 which is also a newer model should still be in production. This always according to the Bertram website.

Unfortunately, one of the results of the industry catastrophe of the early 90s was that the US went from a net exporter of mid-size and larger pleasure boats, to a net importer. This trend has, unfortunately, never been reversed.

Maybe because during that period a "mid-size and larger" boat got bigger by such a large degree that the American boat building industry could not even begin to compete with European yards who had generations of experience building small displacement inland and coastal trading vessels. We built speedy little fun boats for a middle class market that simply doesn't exist anymore.

Asian factories can assemble an acceptable production boat for the few remaining buyers at a price we can't match. Their market is price driven and if their product is imported with a Scandinavian or European sounding name, first time owners will buy them - once.