Poland’s Boating Industry Riding a Wave

Poland is a global boatbuilding center. These are just some recreational boat brands built in The Land of Fields: Sea Ray Boats, Axopar Boats, Skamnader Boats, Sunreef Yachts and Galeon Yachts. Courtesy Manufacturers, Tony Esposito; Montage: Kevin Falvey

For the last decade, Poland has been riding a serious wave of growth in boatbuilding, growing a well-deserved reputation, and respect from industry insiders and boat buyers alike In the two  biggest boatbuilders in the world, Groupe Beneteau, Brunswick, builds some boats in Poland (beating tariffs and taxes in the process). Other brands that build boats in Poland include Axopar, Galeon, and Saxdor.

“When we started out [2003], customers all-in-all, I think, weren’t convinced that Poland was a manufacturer of luxury goods, and this would also apply to Polish customers. This has changed in recent years,” explains Artur Poloczański, PR director for Sunreef Yachts, makers of power and sail catamarans in the historic shipbuilding port city of Gdansk.

Sunreef’s founder, Francis Lapp, and others set about deliberately changing that reputation, which has matured to the point of being touted by the Polish Investment and Trade Agency through a three-day media tour for foreign journalists visiting various boatyards, support services, and engineering schools that provide a broad sample of what Poland’s boating industry has to offer.

Boaters are Boaters

No matter where you go, boaters are boaters the world over, though the boating style is as varied as the countries and cultures.

In Europe generally, and Poland specifically, sailing is more popular than in North America, resulting in many boatyards offering both sail and power vessels. Areas like the inland Masurian Lakes region in the northeast of Poland, Lake Zurich in Switzerland and Lake Constance, where Germany, Switzerland, and Austria meet, are regulated and restricted as to power-type which has facilitated a broader and faster adoption of electric boating across Europe, another area where Poland stakes a leadership position.

In the same fashion that boaters are universal; so, it seems, are the people who build boats – at least those we witnessed in Gdansk – whose passion and pride were as palpable as any OEM in the States.

Poland itself features lakes, rivers, canals and coastal waters on which recreational mariners can ply the waters. Tony Esposito

Conrad Shipyard is described as a ‘boutique’ yard offering low-volume, high-quality, production of both sail and traditional diesel-powered yachts.

“We grew from the commercial shipyard so, I like to say, our boats are not toys,” offered Paweł Polak, Project Manager and the second employee hired when the yard became a private concern. “We try to utilize ship standards where possible for safety; to have a robust boat and a great boat not only for the owner, but also for the crew.”

CEO Mikołaj Krol, whose passion for boatbuilding is infectious, has concluded over the years that sailing clients are much more intimately involved with every detail of the build.

“Sailing is a passion, so they treat the boat like a place where they spend their greatest moments on board,” he said. “They will make sure every corner is rounded because you can be injured by it. Everything should be protected.” (Editor’s Note: We Boating editors think that is a good practice for power craft, as well.)

“On the motorboats, it’s more of a space to live. This is why the motorboat clients are not so involved, because there are fewer details.”

Sustainability Ability

100-years after electric boating was introduced to the United States it is still a struggling proposition, limited in large part by range – meaning battery capacity, and the fact that American boat buyers seem to desire the ability  to go far, fast. Electric boating is more broadly accepted in Europe, where many inland lakes are restricted. If you are a lakefront homeowner there, chances are high that, like waterfront owners in the US, you are going to buy a boat, right?

For more than 20 years, Green Dream Boats have been supplying solar-powered electric boats to largely resort and rental operations in 19 countries, and the US states of California, New Mexico, Texas, Georgia and Florida.

Electric-powered craft, such as this model from Green Dream, built in Poland, have attained wider acceptance in Europe. One reason for that is that there are more lakes with power restrictions. Courtesy Green Dream Boats

In 2015, it moved from Gdansk to the landlocked city of Koszęcin in Southern Poland, where it builds a range of catamarans and monohulls in 21-, 23-, and 31-foot configurations, the latter designed for moving small groups or as a cabin cruiser.

Managing Director,  Barłomiej Brzezina, said the solar panels fixed to flat areas of the aft deck or hardtop will charge the batteries for a 3kW motor in four hours with a 50kW requiring seven hours charging. The solar panels also provide charging while the boats are underway.

Sunreef seems to be positioning itself as the sustainability leader from its fully electric line of sail and power catamarans to hybrid offerings. While traditional internal combustion engines still make up 50-percent of sales, the builder of catamarans from 50- to 100 feet takes sustainability beyond power, starting with the use of PT foam in the hull.

“When you build a Sunreef 80-foot catamaran that means you have 600,000 recycled plastic bottles in the foam, but we didn’t stop there.” Artur Poloczański said during a tour of the newer of Sunreef’s two Gdansk yards. “We started to replace marina plywood with PT foam. The outcome is, we have something lighter, so, more energy efficient and on the same Sunreef 80 you can estimate that the interior – the furnishings – has more or less 160,000 additional recycled plastic bottles.”

Sunreef has been moving away from the use of teak wood, finding a natural alternative decking that will launch in the next few months.

Interior furnishings are made of flex fiber and PT foam, and in the same fashion foam has made its way into the interior, flex fiber might be used soon in structural components.

Read Next: Carbon Fiber Boatbuilding

The author toured numerous boatbuilding facilities in the course of his research for this story. Here is a glimpse of part of just one of many production lines at Model Art Shipyards. Tony Esposito

“This Flex Fiber turned out to be a really practical and natural alternative to standard composites.”

In addition to generating power while under sail through free-spinning propellers, both sail and power Sunreef Yachts feature the builder’s Solar Skin Technology, outsourced solar cells assembled as panels in-house and integrated into the hull and masts.

“Right now, we are using Ai to predict the shading scenarios coming from the sails and the boom to have a more efficient yield from the solar panels,” Poloczański shared.

On the subject of sails, perhaps the coolest tour of the trip was at Sail Service, Poland’s largest sailmaker.

From small daysailers to the world’s largest tall ships, Sail Service makes them all from its nearly eleven thousand square foot facility capable of producing more than half-a-million square feet of sails annually, and it is all done by hand!

An elevated ‘loft table’ covers most of the production floor and pairs of sailmakers work from foxhole-like bunkers, moving material across the table and through industrial-strength sewing machines as well as true hand-stitching.

Originally part of Conrad Shipyard following World War II, the company began by making sails for 20- to 84-foot vessels sent primarily to the former USSR. With the fall of communism, the company split from Conrad, becoming its own private entity.

Strength in Numbers

Where boatbuilding diverges between Poland and the U.S. is co-op production.

Wiszniewski and Model Art Shipyards are examples of independent concerns that survive through the efficiency of contract building – building for other brands.

Model Art was founded by Phillip Scott, a Britt with deep roots in Poland, who was looking for a less expensive way to build his Parker Boats – not to be confused with the North Carolina builder of the same name. Here in the States, Parker Poland is sold as Skamander Boats.

“Like everyone else, we are looking into modernizing the production process, but the Model Art portfolio are higher-end brands, so we are looking very closely at quality. The production process needs to be maintained at a certain level to achieve that quality, so this is basically the idea behind Model Art,” explained Parker’s Grzegorz Sikora.

Model Art maintains three shifts, producing 500 boats per year for seven different OEMs from around Europe. During our visit the yard was quietly working on a prototype for an eight builder.

In addition to its own line that includes a 45-foot cruiser targeted for the South Florida market – where the parent company purchased a dealership to sell and service the W43, Wiszniewski Shipyard builds for several recognizable names, including Brunswick Corp.’s Sea Ray, Bayliner and Quicksilver. The boats built and sold abroad avoid any tariffs that other US brands might face.

In fact, some of those French builders alluded to earlier now build in Polish shipyards.

The Show Must Go On

Who doesn’t love a boat show? That had to the thinking of our hosts, the Polish Investment and Trade Agency when our trip concluded with a visit to the sixth edition of the Polboat Yachting Festival, held at Marina Yacht Park in Gdynia on the Baltic coast.

Drop in to the middle of Polboat, and if not for the signage and the literature, you could be at any boat show anywhere in the world, with one notable exception: Polboat features only Polish marine products, a true showcase for the breadth and depth of the industry.

With 120 exhibitors – nearly double that of 2024 – in a slumping boating economy and an uncertain trade war occupying the first half of 2025 organizers and exhibitors alike are optimistic about the future.

Held in conjunction with Gdynia Sailing Days, one of Poland’s largest regatta events Polboat features the requisite luxury car and watch displays, fashion show, gala awards dinner, PWC stunt demos and aerial acrobatics by Fly-board; Polboat even has its own branded beer. Everything you’d want in a boat show, but no waterskiing squirrel.   

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