Mercury Marine Lay-off

[jimh]

Brunswick’s Mercury Marine operation announced the lay-off of several hundred employees at its Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, plant, citing excess inventory and reduced demand from its boat builder partners for engines. The announcement is excerpted below.

Mercury Marine has announced a reduction in workforce of 300 employees at its Fond du Lac global headquarters, which will take place now through July, as well as some adjustments to overall operations in Wisconsin, St. Cloud, Florida, and Juarez, Mexico. These actions were taken due to softening of consumer demand in some of our markets mainly as a result of continued high interest rates and near-term reductions in boat production by Mercury’s boat builder partners. Mercury Marine's industry-leading products continue to gain market share around the world but at this time this is not sufficient to fully offset the overall market headwinds.

Earlier this year another one hundred employees at Fond du Lac were laid off.

[Jefecinco]

Perhaps they should refocus on the repower market. From our window it appears Suzuki is often the repower choice due to pricing first but availability is an additional incentive.

[Phil T]

The expanded production "boom" of the post covid era is finally deflating.

Want another sign the economy is cooling off: price of diesel. Was $ 0.50 more than unleaded. Now only $0.10. Less demand means less transportation of materials and products.

It is just the start.

[david s]

More information that gives some additional perspective to the Brunswick press release:

Mercury has more than 3,500 full-time employees in Fond du Lac...

[With the mention of 3,500-full-time employees at Fond du Lac, and adding the] earlier 100-lay-offs Jim mentioned, [the total number of recently laid off employees amounts to 400 people or] about ten-percent of the Fond du Lac workforce.