- December 4, 2025
This story was updated, Sept. 19 at 4:25 p.m.
Brunswick Corporation announced that it is closing its Boston Whaler manufacturing plant in Flagler County four years after the company refitted and reopened the boat production facility.
The production of the models currently produced at the plant off Roberts Road will be consolidated into Boston Whaler’s Edgewater plant, according to a Sept. 17 press release on Brunswick’s website.
FlaglerLive reported “around 300 workers” are employed in the Flagler County facility. In its press release, Brunswick said, “team members from the Flagler Beach facility will be offered opportunities to transfer to the Edgewater location. The transfer is expected to be fully completed by summer 2026.”
When Boston Whaler held a groundbreaking ceremony on May 21, 2021, at the Flagler plant, it announced plans to hire a total of about 400 employees to work at the facility.
John Phillips, president of the Palm Coast-Flagler Regional Chamber of Commerce, said the news was disappointing.
“I was disappointed to read the article in the news about the consolidation of the Boston Whaler facilities to Edgewater, which would potentially result in up to 300 jobs moving out of Flagler County,” he wrote in a text. “We are trying to learn as much as possible about this situation (as quickly as possible) and hope to work alongside our local government leaders and also local business leaders, to see what we can do to help keep these jobs here in this area.”
Brunswick opened the Boston Whaler facility in 2021 at the site of its Sea Ray Boats plant which it closed in 2018. At the groundbreaking ceremony, company officials said high demand of its Boston Whaler boats had outgrown the Edgewater plant’s ability to keep up with supply.
Nick Stickler, then the president of Boston Whaler, said at the 2021 ceremony that it was a bit of luck that Brunswick held on to the Sea Ray Boats plant.
“The thought usually is when you shut a facility down, you sell it, but we didn’t. We certainly would never have been able to put something like this up this quickly,” he said at the time.
In addition to closing the Flagler County Boston Whaler plant, Brunswick announced in the press release that it will close its Reynosa, Mexico, fiberglass boat manufacturing facility, transitioning production to its Merritt Island and Vonore, Tennessee, plants.
