NAICS 33661Industry · 5-digitinternational market

Ship and boat building

This industry comprises establishments primarily engaged in operating a shipyard or manufacturing boats. Shipyards are fixed facilities with dry docks and fabrication equipment capable of building a ship, defined as water-craft suitable or intended for other than personal or recreational use. Boats are defined as water-craft suitable or intended for personal or recreational use. The activities of shipyards include the construction of ships, their repair, conversion and alteration, the production of prefabricated ship sections and barge sections, and specialized services, such as ship scaling, when performed at the shipyard. — Statistics Canada, NAICS 2022A

Establishments · CanadaA: 304
Under 10 employeesA: 61%
Establishments · USA: 1,392
Employment · USA: 146,282
Payroll · USA: $10.2B

Size and shape

How many businesses there are and how small they are. Fragmentation is the first thing an entrant — or anyone selling software into this industry — needs to know, and it is one of the few things that is actually measured.

Canadian establishments by number of employeesA

1–411036%

5–97625%

10–194715%

20–493913%

50–99134%

100–199103%

200–49921%

500+72%

Of 304 Canadian establishments with employees, 61% have fewer than ten — mostly small operators.

Where they areA

British Columbia10434%

Nova Scotia5719%

Ontario5418%

Quebec4314%

Largest four provinces by establishment count. Establishments with employees only — sole operators with no payroll are not in this table, so in trades and personal services the true number of businesses is higher.

How many new establishments are still tradingA

Manufacturing, US · opened 2020

86.2%

1 year

70.8%

3 years

58.4%

5 years

45.3%

10 years

opened 2015

Measured, not forecast: the share of US establishments opening in one year that were still active later. It counts good operators and bad ones together, which is exactly why it is the honest answer to “what are the odds”. It is for the whole sector rather than this market, and the ten-year figure comes from an older cohort because no younger one has reached ten years.

How businesses here compete

The structural profile of subsector 336, which every industry beneath it inherits. This is analyst judgment from how the subsector is organised — not research into this industry, and not a measurement.

international competitionhigh capitalUNVERIFIEDinherited from 336 Transportation equipment manufacturing

A tiered supply chain in which price is dictated downward. The reachable ends are specialty vehicles, trailers, truck bodies and aftermarket.

Who sets the price: A few OEMs, through tiered supply contracts.
The software it runs on: Automotive and aerospace quality systems, supplier portals, product lifecycle management.

Market screens and studies

Market-entry records filed along this branch of the hierarchy. A record at or beneath this code is about this industry; one above it is about something wider that contains it.

Screened one level up. Nothing is filed at this exact code; the screen for 3366 Ship and boat building covers it.

Operating businessScreenedfiled at 3366

Recreational Boat BuilderOne thing must be true

binding constraint: growth quality

Shipyards are not an entry proposition — the seven Canadian establishments with 500-plus employees live on federal shipbuilding programmes. The enterable half is boat building, and the size bands show it is genuinely a small-shop trade: 186 of 304 establishments have fewer than ten people, concentrated in British Columbia and Nova Scotia. A mould, a shed and a skilled laminating or welding crew will produce a boat. The cut is what happens between the shed and the buyer. Recreational boats reach customers through independent dealers who finance their stock, so a builder's shipments are set by dealer inventory, not by retail demand — and when dealers destock, wholesale volume falls faster than the market. Malibu Boats, a well-run listed builder, shipped 4,898 units in fiscal 2025, down 9.0%, for $807.6M of net sales and a 1.9% net margin, and described the year as spent 'supporting our dealers' efforts to reduce their inventory' [A]. The more telling anchor is Canadian. BRP — with a global dealer network, its own engines and C$8,442.7M of revenue in the year to 31 January 2026 — bought its way into boats some years ago and has now left: it booked a C$277.6M net loss from discontinued marine operations in fiscal 2025, a further C$51.1M in fiscal 2026, and closed the sales of Alumacraft's and Manitou's assets during 2025 [A]. If the strongest powersports distributor in the country could not make aluminium fishing boats and pontoons pay through one downturn, a new builder selling a discretionary, financed, seasonal product through the same dealers will not. Not examined: the commercial end — fibreglass lobster boats in Nova Scotia, aluminium workboats in BC — where the buyer is a licence-holder with an income from the vessel. That is a different demand curve and deserves its own look; the marine dealer software on this branch is screened separately.

NAICS 33665 vendors named13 sourced figuresOpen →

Software serving this industry

The vertical software markets filed along the same branch — who sells to these businesses and who they would have to displace — and then the generic categories every business buys whatever it does.

No vertical software market has been recorded along this branch. What the subsector typically runs on: Automotive and aerospace quality systems, supplier portals, product lifecycle management.

Catalogued categories — named, not analysed

Discrete manufacturing ERP SaaS 31-33

And what every business buys · 25 generic categories

Sold to every industry rather than this one, so they are filed against the software industry's own code. The same few vendors recur across most of them.

Who works here

The occupations employed in Manufacturing, most concentrated in it first. The share is measured against the whole sector, not this industry — the published cross-tabulation stops there.

Concentrated in this sectorA

Aircraft assemblers and aircraft assembly inspectors One industry 91.3%

Supervisors, assembly and fabrication One industry 88.3%

Machine operators and related workers in pulp and paper production and wood processing and manufacturing One industry 86.1%

Managers in manufacturing and utilities One industry 84.4%

Machine operators and related workers in chemical, plastic and rubber processing One industry 82.7%

Mechanical, electrical and electronics assemblers and inspectors One industry 82.3%

Machine operators and related workers in food, beverage and associated products processing One industry 79.1%

Machine operators and related workers in mineral and metal products processing and manufacturing One industry 77.7%

Furniture, wood, plastic and other products assemblers, finishers and inspectors One industry 73.9%

Machine operators and related workers in textile, fabric, fur and leather products processing and manufacturing One industry 70.8%

These jobs are mostly done here. An operator in this industry is competing for them against others in the same industry, not against the whole economy.

And the jobs every business has

Other technical trades Across the economy 20%

Technical occupations in electronics and electrical engineering Across the economy 16.3%

Shoe repairers, shoemakers and upholsterers Across the economy 15.2%

Administrative and financial supervisors Across the economy 11.6%

Technical inspectors and regulatory officers Across the economy 10.7%

Administrative services managers Across the economy 9.6%

Legislative and senior managers Across the economy 9.2%

Building maintenance installers, servicers and repairers Across the economy 8.3%

Financial, insurance and related administrative support workers Across the economy 7.7%

Technical occupations in computer and information systems Across the economy 4.8%

Found across at least fourteen of the twenty sectors. In a small establishment several of these are usually one person, or an outside provider.

All 162 occupations →

Inside this industry

2 rows sit directly beneath 33661. Each has a base report of its own.

Code	Industry	Establishments · CA	What is known
336611	Ship building and repairing	136	screened at 3366
336612	Boat building	168	screened at 3366