Burton moving snowboard production from Vermont to Austria

BURLINGTON, VT. (March 19, 9 a.m. ET) -- Burton Snowboards’ premium snowboards will no longer be Vermont-made, as the company is moving production to Austria in the next three months.

The company said March 16 that it plans to close the Burton Manufacturing Center in South Burlington, Vt., in June and move production to Austria, where it has been building snowboards for 25 years.

The company will relocate its snowboard prototyping resources from the BMC to a new facility at its global headquarters in Burlington, Vt.

“Thanks to the BMC staff, we’ve excelled at prototyping and developing product in Vermont which is why all four Burton Olympic halfpipe medals were won on snowboards coming out of our local factory. But simply put, it costs us significantly more to produce a board in Vermont than we are capable of selling it for, and sadly, this is not sustainable in the current economy,” said Jake Burton Carpenter, founder and chairman of Burton Snowboards, in a statement.

The closure will affect 43 Burton workers and the company is working with state officials to assist them. The company will still have more than 900 employees worldwide.

Burton Snowboards was launched in Vermont in 1977. It opened a subsidiary in Innsbruck, Austria, in 1986; and in Japan in 1995.

The company’s snowboards are made with a labor-intensive process — each is handled by more than 40 employees. The core of the boards are usually wood or aluminum, but they are combined with various plastics and fiberglass. The boards are also screen printed with high-level graphics.

The company said that by relocating its research and development to Burlington, it will have all prototyping resources under one roof.

Burton CEO Laurent Potdevin said that its Vermont operations will focus on advanced product development, while the Austrian unit will produce all the high-end snowboards.

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