Veranda Luxury Pontoons Buys Former General Cable Plant For $3.75M

Veranda Luxury Pontoons President Rory Herndon

Veranda Luxury Pontoons of Hot Springs announced Monday that it bought the 377,000-SF manufacturing facility in Malvern (Hot Spring County) that was previously a General Cable plant.

The purchase price for the 35-acre site plus 33 undeveloped acres north of Highway 270 was $3.75 million, according to real estate records.

The new facility will allow the company to double its production from 20-25 boats a week to 40-50 boats a week and hire more people, President Rory Hendren told Arkansas Business on Thursday.

Veranda is a 12-year-old company that makes luxury and performance pontoon boats designed with an interlocking deck system. Its boats are made of all-welded aluminum, which is unique to the industry and one reason it’s doing well enough to expand, Hendren said. Most boats are made of wood.

Veranda is also a sister company to 53-year-old, family owned and operated Xpress Boats of Hot Springs. Xpress makes high-performance, all-welded aluminum fishing and hunting boats.

The two companies share a 243,277-SF facility at Garland County’s industrial park. 

Veranda is moving from its 50,000 to 60,000 SF at the industrial park, and Xpress will take over that space, Herndon said.

He also said about 75 people are working for Veranda now. “But that’s in preparation, knowing that we’re expanding. Normally, it’d be 50-60 … But we’re already starting to get some people in and train them for the move,” he said. 

About 100 people will work at the new plant at first, but “the sky’s the limit” on how many could work there in the future, Herndon said. “We don’t have a definite number, objective or goal, but as the product line grows and gets bigger, 150-200 [employees] probably in two years, somewhere in that neighborhood.”

Veranda is renovating the Malvern plant and hopes it will be operational a year from now.

And its expansion comes as the pontoon boat industry is growing.

Herndon explained that pontoon boats with higher-horsepower engines are in demand because consumers are realizing a faster pontoon boat — one that can be used for water sports — is more affordable than another type of boat, such as a wakeboarding boat.

In addition, Vernanda is keeping a close eye on the “volatile” trade situation going on at the national level.

The company has seen price increases in materials and some of its suppliers have had difficulty securing materials from overseas due to tariffs, Herndon said.

But the tariffs have not affected sales yet, he said.

General Cable’s plant in Malvern was shuttered in 2017. It was slated to close even before the planned $2.5 million wind-energy transmission line, the Plains & Eastern Clean Line project, went belly up. General Cable had been selected to deliver $135 million in conductive wires for that project.