The following is an article published in the Carolina Country magazine and it concerns economic assistance provided by Carteret-Craven to a local business.

(Jones Brothers Article – Mike Bradley for Carolina Country)

You can’t discuss the economy in the eastern counties of North Carolina without talking about the maritime industry of boat builders, marinas, boat repair/restoration, and marine construction. Statewide, these businesses provide over 20,000 jobs, the majority in the rural counties of the state served by NC Electric Cooperatives.

Boatbuilding is one of the first recognized trades in the state. It is more traditional than tobacco or textiles along our coast. It is a trade where long-established family businesses and newly created corporate brands sell product locally, nationally and internationally. These builders utilize building techniques that vary from the “old” way of plank-on-frame to modern vacuum infusion fiberglass technologies. 

The business of boatbuilding requires a critical understanding of boaters, boating, boat construction and regulations; lots of regulations! Add facility construction codes, changing air quality regulations, fire codes, OSHA safety rules, Coast Guard testing requirements, employee training, production changes, new technology, fiscal management, cost-effective energy decisions, and you have a glimpse of the business complexity.

Donnie Jones, of Jones Brothers Marine in Morehead City has been tackling these complicated issues for the past two years. Jones has been the pusher, puller, and sometimes magician for the company’s new boatbuilding facility. It hasn’t been an easy road. Building a new building for the construction of fiberglass boats requires federal, state, county, and city oversight - often on both the boat and the buildings involved. Following the guidelines and rules is a series of starts and stops, often demanding financial and technical resources before they are affordable or available.

Jones Brothers’ boats are 16 – 23 foot fiberglass flat-bottomed skiffs (Bateau) and Vee Hull (Cape Fisherman) designed for the coastal waters of the east coast and surrounding sounds and waterways.  The demand for new boats has required a new production facility.

Designing a new boatbuilding facility that simultaneously produces boats and cash flow requires abundant research on cost-effective, energy-frugal, regulatory-compliant air management systems. And that is just the start. It also begs a number of decisions related to equipment used in fiberglass boat production, and it encourages project management and innovative financing.

Jones will be the first to say that it is not done yet, but he can point to a number of building decisions that point in that direction. Importantly, he contacted Carteret-Craven Electric Cooperative. Carteret-Craven played a critical part in Jones Brothers new facility by providing assistance with an interest-free economic development loan made available through a program developed in conjunction with the North Carolina Electric Membership Corporation. This allowed the company to step up their timetable for the new facility by several years.  Because of this, Jones Brothers will soon double its employee base.  In addition to the original loan, the Cooperative provided grant-writing assistance to the Town of Morehead City so that water lines could be run to the site.

On the energy-saving side, the new Jones Brothers facility utilizes innovative design and a number of new technologies. One is the energy efficient, in-the-floor hot water heat transfer method utilizing Voyager high efficiency hot water systems feeding a Wirsbo in-floor heat-transfer package. These systems create a consistent ambient temperature that is critical in fiberglass construction. Temperature controls the quality of the product – and cost-effective quality provides more money to bottom line. 

There a couple of other energy efficient designs built into this facility which will not only conserve energy and but reduce long-term energy costs. Adequate lighting is critical to quality boatbuilding. Mold preparation, hull construction, painting, quality control and outfitting all require different quality of light, and for builders the size of Jones Brothers, the same building area requires different light conditions depending on the stage of the boat construction. Jones Brothers installed lighting adjustments that can control whole banks or individual lights – keeping the light “on” where it is needed and “off” where adequate with light from building-wide skylights. They also have designed in a “kick-in” generator that will (when completed) monitor the electricity being used and come on when the amperage exceeds a critical peak load level, saving usage electrical fees.

One of the biggest constraints in fiberglass boatbuilding is the balance between EPA air quality regulations and OSHA and EPA employee safety constraints. Again, Donnie Jones found a combination of solutions that meet the regulatory requirements and provides innovative cost controls at the same time. One step taken is the use of low styrene resins and state of the art resin applications systems.  Another is the innovative adoption of electronic and mechanical controls for the building’s air quality control systems. The building utilizes the Frees Corporation’s TEAMS (Total Environmental Air Management Systems) exhaust airflow technology for resin and gel coat spray bays of the building. Unlike typical installations however, Jones has installed cost-efficient resin application flow switches that control variable speed exhaust motors and exhaust dampers, permitting one or more bays to be isolated automatically.

When asked how he managed to get the construction, new technologies, and advanced energy saving components to come together, he says: “I learned from mistakes we and other builders have made in the past and researched what was working for facilities using new technologies. I also knew the kind of cost-constraints we had to work with and factored them in – and I relied like heck on professionals like Craig Conrad and Gary Zajac of the Carteret-Craven Electric Cooperative, Tom Jones of P.T. Jones Electrical and Phil McMillian of Frees who took what we envisioned and made it work”.

It is working. The Bateau and the Cape Fisherman have a strong following of fishing and recreational boaters and they are the company’s best salesmen. The boats have a range of colors, sizes, and layouts with customer innovations a constant. Jones Brothers is just one of over 100 boatbuilders in North Carolina and one of the lines of boats sold by over 400 boat dealers in the state. But, Jones Brothers is a more than customer for the North Carolina Electric Membership Corporation; it is a growing business partner.