Page 14: of Marine News Magazine (June 2024)

13 15

Insights ing to get a lot of interest from customers in pushing that Across the industry, Schwarz is seeing builders emerge direction. Some customers are more progressive, some are from the pandemic and its supply chain and in? ation chal- still more conservative. And there are certainly power den- lenges. “We’re now at a point where we’re really starting to sity challenges for some of those systems for the kinds of invest in the business again,” he said. “We’re actively invest- missions that most of our customers perform. But clearly, ing in people, training programs, education development, that’s an area where we’re going to have to spend a lot of equipment, our facilities. We’ve put quite a bit into the Ta- time and energy.” coma facility to get it back up and running, and are in the process of expanding our operations down there. We have a “An exciting period” roadmap to invest in SAFE over the next couple of years.”

Schwarz is optimistic about the road forward, both for “[The expected demand growth] is going to push SAFE

SAFE Boats and the shipbuilding industry in general. “De- Boats, as it probably is pushing the industry, to ? gure out mand across the industry, from large ships down to smaller how to implement technology, how to automate, how to be- boats, is strong and likely to grow. The U.S. Navy has sig- come more ef? cient, and probably evolve in ways that, hon- ni? cant goals, from large ships all the way down to small estly, shipbuilding and boatbuilding has probably lagged autonomous swarms. There’s a huge opportunity across behind other industries like the auto industry over the years.

the industry for all of us, whether it’s defense and law en- “It’s going to be an exciting period for the industry. And forcement or offshore wind. The challenge now is how do hopefully, as we mature as an employee-owned company, it’s you invest and build infrastructure and ? nd the people to a real opportunity for us to be progressive and look ahead be able to execute that and meet all the demands?” and ? gure out who we want to be and how to invest in that.”

All images courtesy SAFE Boats International 14 | MN June 2024