PORT ANGELES — Layoffs at boatbuilder Platypus Marine that started in February have reached 50 percent of the work force, leaving about 30 people without a paycheck, marketing and sales manager Charlie Crane said.
It’s another in a series of furloughs at North Olympic Peninsula shipyards.
Since the beginning of the year, layoffs to varying degrees also have occurred at Westport Shipyard Inc. in Port Angeles and Townsend Bay Marine in Port Townsend.
The boat building industry in the entire Pacific Northwest has suffered through the same economic doldrums as the rest of the economy, Jim Vleming, regional economist for the state Department of Employment Security, said Thursday.
“We are kind of banking on good news, and if it comes, that it comes in the next few months,” Vleming said.
“We certainly expect the numbers to grow a little bit.”
Crane said he anticipates bringing the laid-off Platypus Marine workers back.
Crane said he’s banking both on work blossoming once spring arrives and the continued success of a new division, established in August, that repairs small and trailer-size boats.
January was a good month, he said, but in February, “we experienced a little slowdown.”
“Spring is here, when most people usually have their boats fixed,” he said.
“We anticipate building her back up again.”
Remaining Platypus employees are working on a 120-foot steel boat and a pilot boat of about 70 feet, Crane said.
But his hopes for new growth lie in the company’s new small-boat-repair section, where workers are repairing at least 10 boats.
“We anticipate that business taking off for us like a rocket,” Crane said.
At Westport Shipyard Inc., which has boat building and cabinet shop facilities in Port Angeles, an unspecified number of employees was laid off the first week in January from the cabinet shop.
A statement then from the luxury yacht-maker said the number affected “was small relative to our total employment.”
On Thursday, two months later, Westport was “kind of hanging in there, trying to keep up with the marketplace demands,” corporate General Manager Phil Beirnes said in a telephone interview from the company’s Westport headquarters.
Beirnes said the company, which is headquartered in Westport, has 900 employees, but would not say how many were employed in Port Angeles. The company also has facilities in Hoquiam and La Conner.
“We will pull out of this thing, especially [in Port Angeles],” he said. “We had a backlog we’re working on, which has helped us to get through this.”
He said the boatbuilding facility on Marine Drive in Port Angeles was at full employment with three yachts in production and that no one had been laid off from that shop.
“The shop is full in Port Angeles,” he said.
In an effort to expand business, the company is bidding on contracts to build Coast Guard vessels, Beirnes said.
Mike Rainey, chief financial officer at Armstrong Marine in Port Angeles, did not return a call requesting comment on Thursday.
At Townsend Bay Marine, 40 workers were laid off in January after the company finished building a 127-foot yacht.
About 30 to 35 workers were employed there on Thursday compared to a full-bore work force of about 80 under better circumstances, Chief Financial Officer David King said.
“I’ve never seen anything as bad as this,” King said. “This is the worst I’ve seen in terms of people struggling to find work.”
Townsend Bay, which specializes in building and refitting luxury yachts, is being kept afloat for now by existing customers, King said.
“We will recover considerably more slowly than other sectors of the economy because of the nature of our projects and their gestation,” he said.
“We are busy working on developing new work and new markets,” King continued. “Where that will take us, I’m not prepared to predict.”
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Staff writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-417-3536 or at paul.gottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.