Nobody will be happier than I if the plastic sailing ship kit makes a comeback. But the economic forces on the plastic kit industry are such that I just don't think it's going to happen.
A plastic kit requires the manufacturer to make a far, far bigger investment than a wood kit does. It's interesting to follow the ModelExpo/Model Shipways website, which tells which Model Shipways kits are currently in stock. Apparently the company produces them in batches of six or eight - and those six or eight take weeks or months to sell out. The company can afford that, because the investment in basswood sheets and britannia metal castings (which don't require injection molding) is so much smaller than the expense of the injection molds required to make a plastic kit.
Another problem: a sailing ship model takes much longer to build than an aircraft, car, or tank. Some excellent work-in-progress threads about sailing ship models are running in this Forum - and they've been running literally for years. A plastic kit company can't make money off a modeler who buys a kit once every three years.
The plastic kit manufacturers don't let us see the actual data, but I have the impression that a plastic kit has to sell in the tens of thousands - if not hundreds of thousands - before the company gets its investment back. If Calder/Jotika, Bluejacket, or Model Shipways turns over a few hundred, that's ok. Bluejacket produced its CSS Alabama and USS Kearsarge in limited editions of 150 each. By selling the kits for over $700 apiece, the company will make money (though, I suspect, not a lot). No plastic kit company would even consider producing something that would only sell 150 copies.
I also have to say that I don't think styrene is even close to an ideal material for sailing ship kits. It's fine for hulls and certain fittings, but lousy for masts and yards - and certain other fittings. The injection-molding process can't produce a block or deadeye with a groove around it and a hole through it - without slide molding, which is very expensive. And plastic belaying pins are a sorry joke.
I've said for years that the ideal sailing ship kit would be a multi-media project. Plastic (or resin) for the hull, wood for the deck planking, metal or resin for the blocks and deadeyes, wood for the spars, etc. I know of one manufacturer who's taken that approach. It's a Dutch firm called Artitec: http://www.artitec.nl/index.php/en/kits/category/h0-ships . Take a look at those seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Dutch yachts. (Unfortunately I haven't found an American dealer who actually has them in stock - though several dealers list them.)
For a while Model Shipways sold a version of its nice little pilot boat Phantom with a resin hull. I bought one and thoroughly enjoyed building it. But by the time I was finished MS had taken it off the market; the version currently available has a machine-carved basswood hull.
And Cottage Industries Models makes a nice 1/96-scale American revenue cutter with a resin hull: http://cottageindustrymodels.com/?page_id=95 . I wouldn't mind having that one, but the price is a bit steep for me.
My cordial recommendation to anybody who wants to get into serious sailing ship modeling is to check out the wood kit scene. (But for heaven's sake avoid the HECEPOBs!) I just don't see the injection-molded plastic sailing ship kit making a comeback. But I hope I'm wrong.
P.S. Please forgive my old curmudgeonly professor's whining, but the word is spelled S O V E R E I G N . There! Now I've got that off my chest.