Finland Times

 

Motor Boats Venexpo 2016 fair in Turku on Thursday, November 5, 2015. Domestic boat trade has picked up slightly from the year before. Photo – Str / Lehtikuva.

The local use, maintenance services and export of boats increased significantly during the recent period.

 

Exports of boats rose two percent by the end of August particularly due to increased demand in Sweden and Norway.

 

A total of about five thousand boats were sold to the two Nordic countries which was one-third higher than last year.

 

Boat maintenance services are offering more opportunities to earn money. Juha Lehtola, the execu-tive director of boat company Buster Boats has urged the boating industry to take heed of the hint.

 

Speaking during a boat fair held in the coastal town of Turku, Lehtola said traditionally, the boat owners take the initiative to lower the boat in the waters in the spring, raise it above in autumn, win-terise and also take care of the boat. Furthermore, the practices in the sector have modernised.

 

Photo – Str / Lehtikuva.

Ville Räisänen, the head of boating unit at the Finnish Transport Safety Agency-Trafi which has been responsible for registering boats for over a year, said the first registration of boats online will become smoother at the turn of the year. 

 

Customers will soon be able to carry out registrations on the Trafi website by logging onto their own pages but still the electronic and paper registrations are valid, Räisänen said.

Since the beginning of last April, Trafi has been granting special identifier for registered boats.

 

Räisänen said quite a lot of applications for the distinctive identifier have been lodged during the first half or the year.

 

The trade in the sector has also seen increase in both domestic and foreign demand for boats, said Jouko Huju from the Finnish Marine Industries Federation-Finnboat. 

 

“Almost 36000 new domestic boats were registered in the country by the end of September, an in-crease of three percent from the corresponding period of last year,” Huju told STT over phone.

 

According to Huju, approximately 4,000 new boats which do not need to be registered were sold.

 

“It is difficult to predict the economy during these times, but we assume boat sales will continue to increase also next year,” Huju said.