Brand

Yamarin

Yamarin is a Finnish powerboat brand established in 1972. It was created by Kesko, the Finnish wholesale group that had imported Yamaha products since 1965, with the stated aim of building boats matched to Yamaha outboard motors; the name combines "Yamaha" with "marine". The first models were the 380 and 420, four-metre open console boats fitted with 25-horsepower Yamaha outboards. The first hard-top model, the 555 HT, followed in 1975. The brand grew through the 1980s and 1990s. An orca logo was adopted in 1984, and the Yamarin 405 launched in 1985 sold 1,170 units in its first year. Later models included the 575 BigGame and 600 BigRide. Exports to Sweden, Norway and the Netherlands began in 1990. Around 2000 the brand changed its side colour from turquoise to dark blue and revised the logo, and introduced the 6100 BigRide day cruiser. Yamarin states that more than 70,000 of its boats have been built. Yamarin has two product lines. The main Yamarin range is built in glass-reinforced plastic and covers day cruisers, bow riders and open console boats. A separate aluminium line was introduced in 2010 as Yamarin Cross; it is now presented on its own site at cross.boats, where it is referred to both as "Yamarin Cross" and as "Cross". Inha Works lists Cross as one of its three brands alongside Buster and Yamarin. The boats are built by Inha Works Ltd (Inhan Tehtaat Oy Ab), a Finnish manufacturer whose site on the Inhanjoki river in Ähtäri traces back to 1841, when Erik Gustaf Roschier obtained permission to manufacture iron there; ironworking production proper began in 1851, and the site was expanded from 1884 under August Nilsson Keirkner. Aluminium boatbuilding came to Inha in 1973, when Fiskars moved Kello boat production there from Kellokoski Works, and was fully relocated to Ähtäri in 1976; the Buster brand name dates from 1977. Inha Works was acquired from Fiskars by Yamaha Motor in 2016, ending nearly a century of Fiskars ownership. In December 2016 Kesko announced the sale of its Yamarin boat business and its Yamaha import operations in Finland to Inha Works Ltd, then a subsidiary of Yamaha Motor Europe N.V.; the transaction was completed at the end of June 2017, bringing Yamarin and Cross under the same company as Buster. The Yamarin business had net sales of about EUR 65 million in 2015. Inha Works has over 180 employees and manufactures roughly half its output in-house at Ähtäri, with the remainder at subcontractors Fenix Marine in Valkeakoski, Finland, and Ślepsk Shipyard in Poland. Flagship models since the ownership change include the Yamarin 88 DC (2018) and the 63 DC and 60 DC (2020).