If you’re a fan of Starcraft, Sylvan, and SunChaser pontoons, you are gonna love this bit of news: Smoker Craft Inc. has announced plans to build a 95,000 square-foot addition to its pontoon manufacturing facility in Indiana. This will roughly double the company’s manufacturing space for pontoon products, according to Smoker Craft Inc. president, Doug Smoker. Thanks to this $2.5 million addition, total production space for the Starcraft, Sylvan and SunChaser pontoon brands will cover more than 180,000 square feet.
“We expect to break ground in September, have the roof and walls up by December and be in full production by February or March of 2015,” says Smoker. “The new addition will be built alongside the existing plant so the construction won't have any impact on current boat production.”
Clearly, our love of pontooning has become more and more universal. With pontoons now making up about 40 percent of the company's output in terms of total units shipped, this added floor space will allow Smoker Craft Inc. to increase its pontoon production volume to nearly 180 boats per week. Even better, it will improve production efficiency. “As an example, we
make our own upholstery for pontoons, but the upholstery shop is located two buildings away,” says Smoker. “Moving that upholstery requires a forklift to drive across the property, which just adds steps to the process and can be challenging in winter after we've had a major snowfall. So relocating that aspect of production into the same building just makes sense."
Smoker adds that the main goal behind their expansion is "to be more efficient, to improve the way vendors in our supply chain deliver their products to us, and ultimately build a better product.”
Better pontoons are certainly something we’d all wave our hands about.
