I've just returned from an extended business trip to Taiwan and China where I visited some of the major boat builders with factories in both countries.  This was my third trip to Taiwan over the years and first to China.  In the last 15 years or so Taiwan has really come into it's own as a quality boat building region.  I've seen firsthand many times the poor quality of Taiwan built boats of the 70' and 80's but it is disingenuous to compare those days to the product being delivered from there today. 

The factories are state of the art, clean, and staffed by boat building professionals with years of expertise.  Asian built boats, without question, hold their own on the stage with products from Europe and the U.S.  

Because of the quality of the labor pool, wages are relatively high.  So this, along with the rising cost of materials, have forced segments of the Taiwan market to now relocate manufacturing to mainland China.

Sounds familiar doesn't it?  It's not just here that companies have to make the tough decision to move manufacturing offshore.  It's almost surreal to consider the manufacturing juggernaut where much of the world's products have been sourced for the last few decades has now prospered to the point where it's own resources are too expensive to produce competitive products.

This appears to be the case for the smaller yacht segment.  Many of the builders have moved manufacturing of  the smaller models in their product line to the mainland. 

The factories in China are even bigger, cleaner and more high tech than their Taiwanese counterparts.  Part of that is because they are brand new, but there is also just a heck of a lot more space to build out there.  Instead of having a test tank in the middle of a city barely big enough to fit a single boat, China factories back up to major rivers or waterways where full seatrials can be performed.

China is in the same place that Taiwan was a couple of decades ago where the labor pool needs to mature.  The facilities are in place, the engineering and designs are still produced by the parent companies or well respected contractors overseas, and the machinery used to produce components are light years better than what Taiwan had in the beginning, so it shouldn't take as long to get China up to speed if they can recruit good people.

I'll talk more about some of the exciting things builders are doing over there in future posts.  One thing that did get my attention was the extensive use of LED lights.  It is absolutely the right way to go as they draw much less power, take up less space and throw off little or no heat.  LED's aren't anything new but they need to be incorporated into everything from interior and exterior lighting on boats more often.  Plus they can look very cool. Jeff McLarenLED Art in Taiwan