Nichols Brothers Boat Builders has a new captain at the helm, and he said Monday that the future of the company looks bright.

“It’s a different company than it was two years ago,” said John Collins, who takes over from Len York as chief executive officer of the Freeland firm. The transition was announced Monday.

“We’re expecting to grow in a carefully orchestrated way,” Collins said. “We feel pretty confident we can do it.”

Collins said the company is aggressively seeking new contacts, and expects to increase its workforce from 150 employees currently to as many as 250 in two years.

“We’re hiring almost every week,” Collins said. “We hired three today.”

He said current contracts, plus the anticipation of new ones “will dominate our schedule for the next year and a half.”

“We are rapidly ramping up,” he said.

York, 59, said Monday his restructuring work at Nichols is done, and that it’s time to move on. He has accepted a similar position with a manufacturing firm in Pennsylvania, although not in boat building.

York said he would be available to assist in the transition for the next three to six months.

“The company is in great shape and in good hands,” York said. “I’m really excited about its future.”

Collins, 63, said he has more than 40 years in the metals industry, mostly involving aluminum and steel, the cornerstones of Nichols Brothers’ work. He also has executive and consulting experience in developing projects for a number of companies, and has dealt with the Navy.

He most recently was head of a Birmingham, Ala.-based corporate consulting firm that has done extensive work for the investors of Ice Floe, the Dallas, Texas company that purchased Nichols Brothers out of bankruptcy nearly two years ago.

He said the investors, who he has known for more than seven years, approached him about the position at Nichols.

“They’re good people,” he said.

Collins also was a top executive at Alumax, one of the world’s largest aluminum companies, which was acquired by Alcoa in 1998, and he was an executive with several metals-fabrication firms.

“The people at Nichols Brothers know how to build great boats, and they have been doing it for 45 years,” Collins said. “We are making changes now that will help them continue their work with fewer hassles, less interference and fewer delays.”

“We haven’t fired anybody,” Collins said. “We’ve placed them so they can make better contributions.”

“I’m pretty buzzed about what I consider to be the strengths of this company,” he added.

York led Nichols Brothers through its 15-month transition from bankruptcy after financial woes forced layoffs and the eventual sale of the company to Ice Floe.

Last fall, 30 Nichols Brothers employees were laid off when the company lost a contract to build a new ferry for a California buyer.

York said earlier that the laid-off employees probably would be hired back first.

Collins said he’s not filling an interim position.

“I’m here for the long term,” he said.