Avon Closure

[Jono Garton]

I believe Avon are closing the UK factories and moving production to East Europe?

Anyone know anything?

[Neil Harvey]

Try looking here

http://rib.net/forum/showthread.php?t=24049

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/south_west/7343221.stm

[Nos4r2]

Hope it'll still be possible to find spares

[Locozodiac]

Originally Posted by Jono Garton

I believe Avon are closing the UK factories and moving production to East Europe?

Anyone know anything?

Probably will end moving or jointventuring their UK plants to countries like, Korea, China to reduce hand labor costs. As many Companies are doing now a days.

[prairie tuber]

Originally Posted by Locozodiac

Probably will end moving or jointventuring their UK plants to countries like, Korea, China to reduce hand labor costs. As many Companies are doing now a days.

Probably so. The problem is that the quality of the product will plummet when this happens, and the Avon brand name will no longer be revered in the way it currently is by knowledgable boaters once the Costco & Wal-Mart start pushing cheaply made Avon boats.


The first blow to Avon happened a few years ago when they were acquired by Zodiac. It was only a matter of time before Zodiac would send Avon on down to the same race toward the quality bottom like they did with their own 'leisure grade' line of boats 23 years ago when they started hyping their 'strongan duotex' PVC products.

This part of the article that Neil linked says it all;

"The firm moved to the town in the early 1960s, but parent company Zodiac Marine and Pool has blamed market forces and stiff competition from Asia."

[chris123]

I don't know whether to be or

It's a real shame to see yet another once great British manufacturing company disappearing.

I can't see that it will do them any favours with their commercial customers - if there is any drop in quality or level of support I can see the RNLI / Coastie / etc dumping them pretty sharpish.

Cheers

Chris

[GRAHAM SOMERS]

Avon are closing 3 of their 7 Factories including the Wales one. They are opening a new plant in Tunisia. The Avon RIB hulls are mainly generic with Zodiac and Bombard, so their main GRP production is consolidated to one plant.

[Locozodiac]

[QUOTE-Prairie Tuber] The problem is that the quality of the product will plummet when this happens, and the Avon brand name will no longer be revered in the way it currently is by knowledgable boaters once the Costco & Wal-Mart start pushing cheaply made Avon boats.

If Avon will maintain the same Hypalon fabric, same glues & other components usede on UK on their Tunisia new factory, the quality will remain the same, it will be a matter of some time to train local workers untill they are skilled, definitely all the production will be supervised by Avon people. On the other hand is a pitty that such a worldwide reputed boat Company must close their UK facilities in order to compete with hand labor & prices with other international brands. This is a globalization effect reality.

One positive thing that will come out of this is that worldwide old & new boaters will have the opportunity to buy Avon brand available at better prices than actual UK prices, not necesarily cheaper to be sold at Kmart, Costco along with Korean/China made brands.

As an example, still have in perfect shape/use with a heavy 10 year use a PVC 330 Quicksilver made in Korea factory supervised by Mercury Marine. The same USA built model was more expensive, so in order to reduce hand labor costs and compete, time ago jointventured with a Korean well reputed boat Company to make their brand and still maintaining their known quality.Other positive point, is that now they are offering Hypalon boats at much competitive prices than ever before and boating is being more popular and affordable than few years back.

Long Live Avon

Happy Boating