Cookson boat yard out of work

I was chatting with a yacht broker in London the other day who was telling me about boatyards in Germany and Sweden going in to moth balls due to a worldwide recession in the yacht market.

Now Auckland-based Cookson Boats - one of the world's leading racing boat builders - is doing the same once its current projects are finished. Faced with a blank order book it will have to lay off its 62-strong workforce.

Cookson was responsible for Team New Zealand's America's Cup boats, Steve Fossett's Playstation (renamed Cheyenne) and Larry Ellison's Sayonara, winner of four world maxi championships.

Sales for big yachts have dried up as potential buyers hang back due to the economic downturn in their respective businesses. The project-based nature of yacht-building, however, means that yards will be able to gear themselves up again when economies recover. The danger for existing yards is that some skilled builders will have moved on to other things, possibly starting their own small businesses. But that's the , nature of evolution or what the economist Joseph Schumpeter called "creative destruction."