Buy British campaign

[oldgit]

" I wanted something that provided good accomodation and superior fuel consumption. After some research, the answer was a semi displacement trawler style MB. This gives me at least twice the MPG of the T47, albeit at lower speeds but what's the hurry?"

My old hobby horse comng home to roost and the UK repeating old mistakes.
While energy costs were constantly rising over the last couple of decades we in the british boat building industry just kept on producing bigger and faster and heaver boats using bigger and bigger engines and sold them on the optimistic premise that marine fuel, lets use the word "subsidised" or taxed at lesser rate if you would prefer ,would go on forever.
The derogation was meant for users of Ford 4D engines and tractors not for owners with twin 500hp Volvos.

So with much wailing and knashing of teeth esp. on here,it all came to an end and does the UK boat industry have a class of comfortable yet economical boat on offer similar to the requirement above.Nope its off abroad to purchase yet again
When you next wander round any boat show a virtual prize for anyone who can find anything remotely refering to the actual fuel consumption of any given boat.
IMHO.

 

[MapisM]

I'm not asking people to buy British motorboats as a compromise, but because they are excellent.

Well, "excellent" actually is a rather generic definition.
But most people are used to think of an excellent product as something which stands head and shoulder above the others in all respects.
And if this would be the case, your suggestion would be absolutely correct.
But as a matter of fact, it isn't the case.
British mobos are (on average) good. Some are better than others, and a few are possibly among the best in their own segment.
But name me one single British mobo which in your view clearly stands head and shoulder above all its competitors, and I'm pretty sure to be able to name you some others which are equally good, if not better.

 

[Bajansailor]

But name me one single British mobo which in your view clearly stands head and shoulder above all its competitors, and I'm pretty sure to be able to name you some others which are equally good, if not better.

How about JFM's lovely Fairline 78 'Match'?
I think that she stands head and shoulders above Princesses and Sunseekers of similar size for sure.
And most probably above all of her sisterships as well.
And probably at least a nose above much of the European competition.

 

[henryf]

Let us not fall into the trap of playing one British builder off against another in an attempt to destroy them all. I used the word excellent in reference to their comparison against other manufacturers of the world.

Rather than use Match specifically I would rather focus on all Fairline Squadron 78 boats.

At the other end of the scale I think my own boat the Princess P42 stands very close scrutiny in the world Market. Evolved over a number of years to maximise space usage the level of machinery installation behind the scenes and joinery front of house is up there with the very best.

I would see both of these models as being excellent when compared on the world stage. The fact you will all be able to offer up other British built boats as alternative choices to either of these only goes to underline just how good the British motorboat manufacturers are when viewed in the context of a world stage.

Henry

 

[OAF]

At the other end of the scale I think my own boat the Princess P42 stands very close scrutiny in the world Market. Evolved over a number of years to maximise space usage the level of machinery installation behind the scenes and joinery front of house is up there with the very best.Henry

I have to agree, having scoured hundreds of boats in my search for for my own boat I kept coming back to the British built boats as they seemed to have the edge over foreign built craft! or maybe I am just biased towards a home grown product!

 

[Deleted User YDKXO]

Because unlike the British motorboat manufacturers our car industry doesn't produce as world class a product. It has been besotted by troubles, production issues, and the best stuff is prohibitively expensive or extremely niche market.

I'm not asking people to buy British motorboats as a compromise, but because they are excellent.

Henry

What? Youre saying that Aston Martin, Bentley, Rolls Royce and Range Rover aren't world class products (yes I know they're owned by foreigners) and they're more expensive/more niche than Porsche? I take it you'll be stocking DB9s and chucking the 911s out now that you've found your Britishness
By the way, to answer your original proposition, yes the British boat building industry is one of the few bright spots in the UK's generallty moribund manufacturing industry but there's no way the British boat building industry is a world leader of any kind, not in innovation, design, build quality or turnover. Yes the British boat building industry is up there with the better players but lets not kid ourselves that its a global leader.

 

[PowerYachtBlog]

By the way, to answer your original proposition, yes the British boat building industry is one of the few bright spots in the UK's generallty moribund manufacturing industry but there's no way the British boat building industry is a world leader of any kind, not in innovation, design, build quality or turnover. Yes the British boat building industry is up there with the better players but lets not kid ourselves that its a global leader.

AMEN to that.

I have always owned Italian boats, have taken care for a few of British ones, and I must say the above post is all but wrong.
British build good boats, at a competitive price premium. But saying Fairline, Sunseeker, and Princess are the best shows how close minded this post has become.
If you like modern stuff I would definitly put a few of the builders coming from Viareggio and that side of Italy way ahead of the Brits, and if if we want to see globally so do some US builders. Yes the builders are all the time coming closer, see what a Polish builder like Galeon are doing at the moment with a British designer. There models are nice finished on and can compete with any of the top, or even mainstream Italian builds.
How about the new Prestige, again the difference is getting closer.

Innovative design? Tell me what the Brits invented in pleasure boating from hull to other design features.
I remember in 1999, Sunseeker and Fairline critizing the stupid vertical windows at Genoa on the Azimut 68, pity is that three years later you see them all with it. Same goes for the glued windows....
I love British boats, but saying they are on top is just plain wrong, and shows how much close minded the British boater especially those still using the boats at home water are.

 

[henryf]

****ing hell. I dispair.

What hope do we have when one of our few remaining world competetive yet labour intensive industries is met with a barage of "yeh ok they're good but no better than some other players out there".

That coupled with people insistant the whole shooting match will be moving to China next Thursday so why bother?

Maybe it's my fault in not choosing the correct thread title. Maybe it should have been "Made with pride in Great Britain" but to be honest I'm not sure if we really are that great any more judging by the sad state of many of the responses. We don't seem to have any pride left in ourselves so why should anyone else? The Americans have self belief, the Italians are certainly passionate about their product, the Chinese are immensely proud about what they do. But we don't give a **** it would seem.

What is it that fills you lot with pride then? Casting your vote in the latest X-factor or Celebrity dancing thing?

I guess most of you think Pizza Hut offers a great dining experience. The fact their carpets are covered in debris from previous diners, the "chefs" don't know what's in a pizza base so when they run out of medium sized frozen bases you have to order small or large, the beer has to come in bottles because that way it can't be ruined and they need a picture of what each pizza should look like so they can paint by numbers is of no consequence.

Aston Martin falls into the "prohibitively expensive" category from my previous post.

I'm 45 tomorrow. I shall remember the last day of my 44th year for all the wrong reasons.

Henry.

 

[Deleted User YDKXO]

Under estimate the Chinese at your peril, every industry they have tackled and invested in inevitably they succeed,

Thats not exactly true. In my own industry, construction equipment, the Chinese manufacturers have tried and failed to get a foothold in many markets including the European and US markets. Firstly their cost advantage is not that great because, like the boatbuilding industry, they are using the same major components as their European/US competitors. Second, their technical innovation is poor; they can copy existing machinery but they dont know (yet) how to innovate. European/US manufacturers innovate new products much faster than the Chinese and therefore can justify higher pricing. Third, Chinese labour costs are rising anyway which is reducing their competitive advantage. Fourth, their currency has been deliberately kept weak to stimulate exports. They know that can't go on and once the Renminbi finds its true level, their price advantage will disappear.
I dont doubt that Chinese boatbuilders can and do make excellent boats although that is mainly using European/US designs and European/US production management. But I cant see the Chinese boat building industry dominating the market for all of the reasons above

 

[MapisM]

How about JFM's lovely Fairline 78 'Match'?

Ok, name me another one.

Jokes aside, that is a good example.
JFM's boat surely falls into my previous "among the best" category.
But I could indeed name some others which are, as I said, "equally good, if not better".
You know what, I'll leave to JFM to name them if he wants, because I'm pretty sure that he knows them better than myself, and he's honest enough to recognise that - even if he surely had good reasons for his choice, and he can be proud of it - there were alternatives out there which aren't overshadowed by Match.
After all, it's not by chance that FL, with their bigger stuff, are targeting the market share of some of their competitors - not the other way round...

 

[MapisM]

I'm 45 tomorrow. I shall remember the last day of my 44th year for all the wrong reasons.

Happy birthday!
Oh, and don't worry. As Charlotte would put it, you're probably just having a mid-life crisis. Did you buy a Porsche yet?

 

[gjgm]

FT supplement today on superyachts
total delivered yachts:
Italy 758
USA 254
Netherlands 188
Turkey 150
UK 86

So at that level, we are in there, but a long way behind.

 

[henryf]

FT supplement today on superyachts
total delivered yachts:
Italy 758
USA 254
Netherlands 188
Turkey 150
UK 86

So at that level, we are in there, but a long way behind.

What possible relevance do the above figures or your statement of "we are a long way behind" have to this thread?

What are the financial times classing as a "superyacht" because if as a nation we have manufactured 86 of what I define as superyachts then I'd say that's pretty bloody good news. That's probably half a billion pounds worth of exports.

If we take 40% of that figure as being labour cost and say the labour is being charged to the job at £50 per hour that's 10,000,000 hours, 263,160 man weeks or just under 5,100 skilled people employed for the year. I rather hope I may have been a touch conservative in my numbers as well. What if more than 40% of a boat's cost is labour and the labour is charged to the boat at less than £50?

That's just the superyachts. Crappy old tubs like mine will blast that figure into the sky.

I see Jaguar Land Rover have just announced plans to invest £350 million in a new engine plant in the Midlands creating another 2,000 jobs. Hadn't one of you better get on the blower and tell them not to bother because all engines will be made in China by Christmas ?

I think half you lot might want to consider handing in your passports and going to live somewhere else if you have so little pride in the place.

Henry

 

[Wiggo]

I guess most of you think Pizza Hut offers a great dining experience. The fact their carpets are covered in debris from previous diners, the "chefs" don't know what's in a pizza base so when they run out of medium sized frozen bases you have to order small or large, the beer has to come in bottles because that way it can't be ruined and they need a picture of what each pizza should look like so they can paint by numbers is of no consequence.

Why bring Italian restaurants in to it? I thought this was about bashing British boat builders?

 

[Deleted User YDKXO]

What hope do we have when one of our few remaining world competetive yet labour intensive industries is met with a barage of "yeh ok they're good but no better than some other players out there".

I could point out that a lack of reality check got the UK's manufacturing industry into its present state. After WW2, the UK was the world's leading supplier of many manufactured products and thanks to arrogant stupid unions and management with their heads up their backsides, we threw that position away. There's no point in believing that the UK's boat building industry is a world beater because by any standard it isn't. There's no harm in believing you build a first class product. In fact all good companies have that culture but to think you're simply better than your competitors is a sure way to go downhill

Aston Martin falls into the "prohibitively expensive" category from my previous post.

Thats bollox. You know as well as I do that secondhand A-Ms are in the same price range as 911s and sell to similar customers

 

[gjgm]

Why bring Italian restaurants in to it? I thought this was about bashing British boat builders?

Hell, is all foreign food off the menu now, too?
PS.. does curry count as foreign or British?

 

[henryf]

Why bring Italian restaurants in to it? I thought this was about bashing British boat builders?

Because if we don't acknowledge the best of what we can offer as a nation we end up getting swamped by mediocrity.

Henry

 

[henryf]

Thats bollox. You know as well as I do that secondhand A-Ms are in the same price range as 911s and sell to similar customers

A new Aston Martin (excluding their re-trimmed Toyota Aygo for a moment), is going to set you back £100k realistically and potentially closer to £140 or £150k. A new Boxster can be had for under £40k and the cheapest 911 comes in at under £65K. We sell a load of good usable Porsches for under £20k, some under £10k. In the Aston Martin World I'm thinking that gets you some parts in a crate or a load of rust with an AM badge on it. And lets not kid ourselves, the Porsche which we sell and you use as a benchmark on which to compare is hardly a bread and butter car. It could also be accused of being prohibitively expensive were it not for models such as the Boxster.

What is it about the British Motorboat manufacturers that you despise so much? What is stopping you from saying yes, they are managing to buck the trend of making a labour intensive product in Britain and a bloody good product at that. Are they the best boats in the whole world? I don't know, maybe not. Maybe there is a manufacturer elsewhere who builds a slightly better boat but not by much and certainly we aren't the poor relation of the Motorboat manufacturing world. Or do you disagree. Are we churning out **** which falls apart as soon as it gets wet?

What is it that prevents you from acknowledging the good Motorboat manufacture does for the British economy? Do you not feel even a remote sense of pride when you see a Sunseeker, Princess or Fairline in some far flung port knowing it was built in good old Blighty and has a little Union flag somewhere in the darkest corner of the Bilges?

I genuinely find all this apathy, self deprecation and even self hatred quite bizarre given the lovely boats we build. I'm really looking forward to going to the boat show this weekend and I know that many of boats which impress me will be British built.

Henry

 

[Wiggo]

What is it about the British Motorboat manufacturers that you despise so much? What is stopping you from saying yes, they are managing to buck the trend of making a labour intensive product in Britain and a bloody good product at that. Are they the best boats in the whole world? I don't know, maybe not. Maybe there is a manufacturer elsewhere who builds a slightly better boat but not by much and certainly we aren't the poor relation of the Motorboat manufacturing world. Or do you disagree. Are we churning out **** which falls apart as soon as it gets wet?

What is it that prevents you from acknowledging the good Motorboat manufacture does for the British economy? Do you not feel even a remote sense of pride when you see a Sunseeker, Princess or Fairline in some far flung port knowing it was built in good old Blighty and has a little Union flag somewhere in the darkest corner of the Bilges?

Well, I wasn't going to rise to this, but now I feel I have to. OK, yes, we do buck the manufacturing trend by managing to successfully build a hugely labour intensive product in the UK, but I don't think it's particularly impressive. We only manage to do it in a market where, frankly, price is really not a prime (or even a major) concern for buyers. You can put it in the same category as Purdey shotguns and bespoke ivory moustache waxing tongs.

And guess what? The Italians, French and Dutch can all manage the same trick. A decent sized manufacturing business probably has more shop stewards (for good or ill) than the whole workforce the British boat building industry employs.

Wonderful products, but in the great scheme of things, utterly irrelevant.

 

[Imperial One]

A new Aston Martin (excluding their re-trimmed Toyota Aygo for a moment), is going to set you back £100k realistically and potentially closer to £140 or £150k.

Not an Aygo I am afraid, it is a Toyota IQ that has a re-modelled body and a total interior retrim. I recently attended a lecture at which Ian Minards from AML gave a very interesting presentation on the Cygnet as it is known, quite a lot has been changed, except the engine and drive train. The reason it is built - at all - is probably only to comply with the EU requirements for all car manufacturers to have a small eco friendly vehicle to offset their bigger vehicles. Companies like Bentley and Porsche do not have to bother conforming to this dictum as the parent company (VW Audi Porsche) already have a small car range in the VW Lupo etcetra so they comply by default. As for the rust comment - steady on there. They did have rust issues on the old V8's / DBS etc of the 70's and 80's but, lest we forget, so did all manufacturers at that time, yes, even Ford, BL and all the other "British", German and European manufacturers! Since those days, all manufacturers have much improved anti corrosion methods in place and or build in Aluminium anyway.

As for UK boats, true, we do build some very fine boats here at home. I for one am proud of our boat building heritage. By and large they are rightly something to be proud of but in truth, I think it is hard to build anything but well in this day and age - maybe therein lies the problem.
Our overseas Asian competitors have much cheaper labour rates and this is a real problem for us and a very tangible benefit for them. Team this up with a European Management team and they have a real recipe for success.

All boats nowadays, from wherever, tend to have engines from Volvo or MAN or Cats or Yanmar etecera, nav systems from Garmin, Raymarine or Simrad, they are built from GRP that is made elsewhere before being imported and assembled into a ready moulded hull. Teak decks are sourced from where? Not from Nottingham or the New Forest! So just how "British" are we in reality?

I agree we should be proud to be British but the fact is that products from overseas cannot be discounted. Where does your TV come from? Your camera? Your washing machine or even crockery?
As you will know, we offer Dutch boats but also a British designed boat from Bill Dixon called a Johnson. It is built in the very best Taiwanese yard and its build is overseen by European management as a result it is a lesser cost than for example the same size Sunseeker. I wish we could build it here but it is simply cost prohibitive to do so. When Atlantic was alive and well, we were building the 38, 42 and 50 models here in the UK at a site right next door to Fairline. Many of the team had worked at Fairline previously but sadly the cost of building here became too much and that facility closed. I actually believe that the Atlantic's built here in the UK were some of the best we built. But, in the end the market place will have its say and for Atlantic, the cost of build was too high and the quality would never be reduced to a lower level. Look at the price of the Broom 445 - four or five years ago it would have been £200k less at least. So a good 5 year old UK built boat has to be a bargain.

Superyachts built in the UK 86....hmmmm I had no idea that Devonport could produce so many boats a year. The term Superyacht is far too freely applied in my opinion but that is another thread wander I suspect!