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http://www.heraldtri…xW=445&border=0 Jon Barker guides a 40-foot teak deck panel as it comes out of a sander at Teakdecking Systems Inc. in Sarasota. STAFF PHOTO / MIKE LANG By Michael Pollick Published: Sunday, August 25, 2013 SOUTH MANATEE COUNTY – Teakdecking Systems Inc. never knows what kinds of orders will come in to its 100,000-square-foot factory, so it keeps about three years worth of inventory around at all times. That’s no easy — or inexpensive — task, though. At wholesale prices of between $25 and $30 per foot, teak is one of the world’s more expensive woods. But for the 30-year-old company, the cost is worth it to have an ample supply of the wood that is prized by boat builders and buyers alike for its moisture-resistant properties and its aesthetic qualities. Having the supply of wood on hand is a departure from standard industry practice — even though it can take six months or more to have teak shipped from forests in Myanmar — but Teakdecking is accustomed to bucking the trends. Several years ago, the company pioneered the concept of building teak yacht decks in a factory. When finished, the deck is shipped to a yacht, uncrated and fastened in place with epoxy, rather than screws. The system had its skeptics, at first, but has gradually become the preferred method for shipyards and boat builders worldwide — from Sarasota’s Chris-Craft to mega-yacht builders such as England’s Pendennis Shipyard. “We kind of revolutionized the industry,” said Alan Brosilow, Teakdecking’s manager of yacht services and one of the company’s earliest U.S. employees. “This invention was not heard of, where you could make a set of patterns and make a teak deck from it and then deliver it,” he said. “People would just not believe you could do this.” The old way Before Teakdecking introduced its new method, if you wanted a teak deck for a yacht, the job required a specialized carpenter who could allow for hatches, hardware, a cabin and a cockpit. Boards would be molded to fit the curves of the deck, then screwed down to the hull. It could take two to three months to deck a large yacht, keeping it in port. But as fiberglass and epoxy started coming into widespread use in the 1970s, a group in Sweden pioneered building teak decks — curves and all — in a factory, and then shipping them to where the boat was being made or refitted, to be installed. The advantages were many: There were no wooden plugs hiding screw heads to fall out, no screws to come loose or metal that could create leaks in the cabin. Instead, buyers got perfectly grained teak decks custom-designed to fit snugly. Today, working from exact digital blueprints made on site, Teakdecking builds decks upside down on its factory floor, using a proprietary raised floor system made up of slots and wedges that helps shape the wood. When finished, the upside-down deck is frozen into its correct position by using a sheet of fiberglass and specially concocted epoxy, or glue. Once cured, the deck panels are sanded, trimmed and fitted together like a jigsaw puzzle. Then they are separated again and packed into custom wooden crates up to 40 feet long for shipping. ‘Sourcing’ the raw material Paul Crist is a big guy who favors blue company T-shirts. He spends his days cutting thick slabs of teak into smaller pieces. But his real job, he says, is “wood sourcing.” He and another worker, Dan Paver, work as a team. Sourcing involves traveling to Myanmar, which has abundant teak forests, to visit mills to scope out which wood to buy and which to reject. “Our standards are real, real high,” Crist said. “Stuff I reject, other boat builders would gladly accept.” Teak tree harvesting kicked into high gear during the British colonial period, which in Burma — now known as Myanmar — lasted from 1824 to 1948. The wood’s resistance to moisture and bugs made it a perfect material for ship-building. Teak can be left unvarnished and exposed to sun and salt water without degrading into splints. It also weathers to a silver-gray color and provides a natural non-slip surface. British demand for ships made of the durable wood consumed most of the teak in India, Thailand and Cambodia. The forests in which teak grows in Myanmar are gradually disappearing, as well. “Natural teak has now almost become an endangered species,” according to a 2012 report by the Ministry of Forestry of Myanmar, which has the last large stands of teak forest in the world. The ministry contends it is keeping the supply sustainable through its current system of forest management. Rules and regulations determine how many trees can be felled, and where. “These are managed forests, very managed forests,” Brosilow said. Brosilow predicted the company will still be buying and using teak 15 to 20 years from now. The Sarasota connection Teakdecking owes its methods to formulations from Sweden, but the company’s process has been used in the U.S. since 1983, ever since Lars Lewander established a factory in Sarasota. The company chose Southwest Florida because it provided access to production boat builders like Wellcraft, which has since moved away, as well as big yacht builders in Tampa and along the east coast. Gulfstar Yachts was an early customer, recalls Joe Zammataro, who was vice president of sales there and is now a yacht broker at Denison Yacht Sales in St. Petersburg. “To use their teak decks was like a fraction of the expense of making our own, and I think the overall dependability was better,” Zammataro said. Smaller pleasure craft rarely come with teak these days, he said. “But when you get into boats in the 60-, 70-, 80-foot range and larger, the teak decks are always a more elegant solution.” Lewander eventually bought out his original partners and became Teakdecking’s owner as well as its president. The company now does $15 million to $20 million a year in sales and has 129 employees. Four years ago, Lewander started an employee stock ownership plan. So now the employees are becoming its owners, with the proceeds from a profit-sharing plan being poured into an employee stock ownership trust. That’s on top of a 401(k) retirement savings plan. “You can come in here and build a career,” said Michael Havey, the company’s director of quality assurance and employee development. Half custom jobs now Teakdecking now derives half of its business from custom jobs and half from production work, with Chris-Craft being a notable and nearby customer. The Sarasota-based builder of luxury run-abouts and yachts has been buying pre-fabricated teak from Teakdecking since 2001. “It has been a marriage that we have had with Teakdecking under the current ownership, a little over 12 years,” said Steve Callahan, vice president of materials at Chris-Craft. “Yes, every single one has teak on it,” he said. Brosilow spends his time coordinating teak projects with a who’s who of shipyards and mega-yacht builders: Lürssen Werft of Germany; Trinity Yachts of Gulfport, Miss.; Christensen Shipyards of Washington; and many others. Teakdecking doesn’t shy away from large jobs, either. It’s built the decks for some of the largest yachts ever constructed, including “Rising Sun,” a 454-foot motor yacht built in 2004 for Oracle founder Larry Ellison and now owned by media mogul David Geffen. The $200 million yacht, with passenger accommodations on five stories, has 8,000 square feet of living space. The planning that goes into big deck projects is just as intricate as the construction method itself. Teakdecking digital designer Mike Baker displayed that complexity recently when he worked on a deck that requires 2,226 square feet of teak for a 120-foot aluminum sailing yacht. The boat was made by Pendennis 15 years ago and is now being refitted at the same British shipyard. Baker and Brosilow have been going back and forth with those overseeing the work in England, and now, Brosilow thinks Teakdecking has finally figured out the exact width of the planks that will be needed — averting skinny pieces of wood around hatches or the need for other significant hardware. That one deck will bring in $350,000, but require the company to go through a lot of its inventory in the process — meaning Crist and Paver will likely be on airplanes soon, heading to Myanmar for continued “sourcing.” Continue reading →