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The waters of economic fortune have given Sealine a choppy ride over the years. The company’s original parent, Fibrasonic Marine, began boat production in 1972, just a year ahead of the world oil crisis. The company survived that particular storm by finding other work and in 1978, it bounced back with two new models called C-Line. A year later, C-Line became Sealine – and in 1998, Fibrasonic founder, Tom Murrant, sold Sealine to a group of venture capitalists.
That led on, three years later, to the Brunswick Corporation (current-day owner of Sea Ray, Bayliner, Boston Whaler and Quicksilver, among many other brands) buying the operation for $68m. All was then relatively calm until the global financial crisis of 2008 bit, and in 2011 Brunswick offloaded Sealine to a private equity firm, which placed the company in administration just two years later. With the Sealine plant in Kidderminster closed, Aurelius SE, the Munich-based parent of Hanse Yachts, stepped in and acquired Sealine’s assets.
A key difference quickly emerged, however, between Sealine and Hanse’s manufacturing philosophies. While Sealine depended heavily on individual skills, Hanse took a far more mechanised approach. Consequently, production of models originally supposed to be built at
