Luxury Boats

A luxury Boats builder has reduced its workforce by a quarter as it invests $300,000 in a new computerised cutting and milling machine.

Marchwood-based Discovery Yachts said it had laid off 20 staff who had come to the end of fixed-term contracts started earlier this year and let eight permanent staff go.

It insisted that the cuts were due to the “natural peaks and troughs of the boatbuilding cycle”.

The company, which builds about ten of its £800,000 to $ 3m blue-water cruising yachts each year, said that it was scaling down after delivering three new boats in September.
It has retained more than 70 staff and has four Discovery 55s in production and is about to start the first of its new design Discovery 57s, announced at the recent PSP Southampton Boat Show .