Message to the MB's.

[billmacfarlane]

Message to the MB\'s.

OK MB owners what's the secret of your industry's success ? I'm just back from a week's hol in Puerto Benus on the Costa Del whatsit. The marina is regarded as one of the poshest in Spain with about 80% of the boats being MB's. I reckon at least 70% of them were built in Britain with the majority being foreign flagged. So while the yot lot bewail the strong pound , the MB lot seem to quietly getting on with making a success of exporting excellent products. What's their secret ?

 

[ParaHandy]

Re: Message to the MB\'s.

I wonder whether series manufacture of a motor boat hull and deck is easier and thus less expensive to automate? To gain productivity in the manufacture of yachts must be quite expensive in terms of capital cost and I doubt a UK bank would support such a venture.

On the other hand, certain opinion formers in the UK have an equivocal attitude to volume production (it's trade, don't you know) and sniffed at European product which the ordinary Brits found perfectly acceptable and bought thousands of them.

The yacht builder's argument "well we build them with double gizmo stretch lycra 50mm thick" and you can't automate that just won't wash. My company now manufactures product cheaper than we did in 1996. We simply invested again and again.

It's all too late, Bill. But hopefully the MBs will keep going.

 

[tcm]

Re: Uk property prices.

I beleive that uk property price rises is a major part of the secret "fuel" that helps power the med market, bill, tho not all uk flagged vesssels are brit-owned - lots of vat-reduction schemes avail to all eu are uk-based. If Pbanus is inded ful of bri-built boats, then this would confirm the property boom theory - brit powerboats tend to monopolise the £100k to 20metre range.

As for parahandy's sail/power observations, i wd say that the average landlubber or nouveau getting "a Boat" would invariably get a powerboat, more space and less "hard" to get going, more loungable, more holidayable for non-seafaring types and even more different from a big sailboat at that range. Dunno why tho, cos the very biggest ones do 14 knots whether sail or power, so why not have a sailboat? -spect cheaper and more housey with power.

Note that all the boats were in, Bill- but the real big sailboats were in the caribee?

 

[claymore]

NO, NO, No.

The costa del criminal is populated by hoodlum and miscreant expat Brits. They didn't do much in the way of schooling and so as a result never really learned to do tricky things like sail boats They were good, however at driving getaway cars. The result is that they found the transference of skills a simpler process and so they all took to motorboatying. This explains the popularity, which in turn reflects the success of the MB industry. This simple formula and explanation cannot of course be applied to those brits who have not become expatriated but populate our marinas, rivers, estuaries, bays and cruising grounds. That would imply that they too are criminals, miscreants and ne'er do wells. Apart from creating the biggest rumpus since the Compass debate, I'm just not that brave
Discuss.

 

[Guest]

Re: Message to the MB\'s.

Surely it's just down to the fact that Brit builders have little competition in this market. Apart from the Italians, who else builds capable, open-cockpit or flybridge, specialist Med boats? The French? The Germans? No. The yanks make some good ones, but there's a perception that they're not as good as European boats (not always the case). The Italians make some fabulous stuff, and it's competitive on price, but their marketing isn't as good as Sunseeker/Fairline/Princess/Sealine.

High-profile marketing of "the dream" by the Brit manufactuers mean that when Mr New Money goes out to buy a Med motorboat they think Sunseeker et al, not Feretti/Cranchi/Azimut, or even Swan/Moody/Oyster. When did you ever see a sailboat ad in an in-flight magazine? When did you ever see a celeb in Hello/OK/Now magazine loafing on a sailboat? To the non-boater a big sailboat seems very foreign whereas a big motorboat seems like a holiday home with an engine (or two).

 

[Viking]

Re: Uk property prices.

Two skippers talking in the bar. The Motor skipper looking at a engineer invoice asked the Sail skipper what he did when his engine broke down. "I get the needle and thead out" was the smiling reply. The sail skipper see he had the lead went on.
"I hear your weekend trip cost you £300 in fuel" "Yes" said the Motor skipper puffing on his big cigar "But I can afford it!"

 

[ParaHandy]

re Weekend cottages?

There was a thread not so long ago asking if boating was an old mans game. I doubted that because I understood the greatest growth in boat ownership is in the 35/45yr age group. And probably Londoners whose cash might not only be from property. There is a good correlation between the FTSE All Share Index and BMIF reported turnover. You could, therefore, argue that high City of London bonuses inflates property and some of that profit goes into a boat. Except that high property inflation has not always accompanied high stock market yields. Nevertheless, the point you make has to be true – it is from asset appreciation and reallocation and where that cash comes from is irrelevant.

In Europe the growth in leisure time is remarkable on two counts: one the working time directives and two in countries such as Holland where, if you can demonstrate that you can do your job in 4 days, the employer has to permit a reduction in working time of 20%.

What do they buy? It is unlikely to be a second-hand boat as such people do not wish to spend their leisure time repairing it. Given that yachts outnumber power boats in the UK, the probability is that our man/women will buy a yacht. Given such stimuli one would have thought that a provider of leisure activity would operate v. successfully.

To return to Bill’s question: why do we have no indigenous (volume not niche) yacht manufacturing with all of the foregoing advantages? The compelling argument is that the UK could not compete at the relatively unfavourable exchange rates. Sales to the UK alone will not support a volume manufacturing operation given that both UK (motor boat) and European builders have the majority of their turnover from exports. Although crucial to profits, the exchange rate is, clearly, not per se the sole factor. What the market, as I surmise, wanted was a weekend cottage (that floated). Cheap & cheerful and lots of them. What the UK supplied was a higher value added product which was expensive to build (one manufacturer claimed to me that the strength of his hull did not lend itself to volume manufacturing), was not finished to the same standard (that requires capital) but was good “in a blow”.

Anyone who bought or drove a BMC Marina or Princess car in the 80’s will recognise this diagnosis.