Kemp: New Yamaha facility in Kennesaw 'another great win for our state'

Apr. 12—KENNESAW — Gov. Brian Kemp was on-hand for the ribbon cutting of a new Yamaha facility that opened in Kennesaw recently.

The 75,280-square-foot Yamaha Marine Innovation Center is the new home of the company's Connected Boat Division, which is focused on developing smart boat technology. It is located about three miles from Yamaha Motor Corporation USA's headquarters at 1270 Chastain Road.

Ben Speciale, president of the Yamaha U.S. Marine Business Unit, said Yamaha's Connected Boat technology allows customers to control their boats using a mobile app.

The facility, in addition to the Connected Boat Division, will also house the company's planning and development division, which includes various engineers and project managers, Speciale said.

"This means we need passionate and future-looking engineers and team members and leaders coming to this facility," Speciale said.

The company plans to work with local universities and others outside of Georgia to recruit these employees. Schools involved in that collaboration include Kennesaw State University, the University of Georgia, Georgia Tech, Georgia Southern, Virginia Tech, Clemson and the University of Michigan.

More than 100 of the company's over 2,300 employees in Georgia will work at the Marine Innovation Center, according to Nicholas Genesi, spokesperson for Yamaha Marine.

Kemp called the facility "another great win for our state."

"And it's an example of why I believe we continue to remain the No. 1 state in the country for business, so we've done that for nine years in a row now," he added.

Kemp said the many Yamaha Marine employees in the room were part of the workforce driving Georgia's strong business reputation.

He also referenced the more than $27 billion that recreational industries, including boating, bring into the state's economy, in addition to employing over 230,000 people.

"An avid outdoorsman" himself, Kemp used the event to highlight efforts his administration has made in public land preservation and outdoor stewardship, as well as his decision at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic to keep parks and recreation areas open.

"I remind people of early in the pandemic, I caught a lot of grief for this, but we never closed any of our state parks, we never closed any of our beaches, and we literally had every state around us where people were coming to Georgia to put their boats on our boat ramps and in our state parks, because those states were closed around us," Kemp said.