Princess Factory visit by Aquaholic

[Hurricane]

A friend told me about Nick's video on the Princess factory.
Brings back memories of our visit when we were buying our boat 16 years ago.
It seems to have grown even bigger since then.

 

[volvopaul]

Looking forward to part two

 

[Tradewinds]

Astonishing!

 

[jfm]

Brings back many memories for me too of visiting boat factories.

A very interesting tour by Aquaholic. On some detailed points, I wondered at 20:00 onwards whether the 80 hull is cored below the waterline. It certainly looks that way, and also it looks like the stringers (that are added after the infusion) are on top of cored sections of hull. Hard to tell from the pics, but a bit worrying.

Ross keeps calling stringers "spray rails". He mixed himself up at 20:07 then continued to get it wrong at 20:58, 21:43, 32:56

When you stand back the most striking thing is that so much is going on - far too much is going on. Princess's "make it in house" approach is the opposite of what many others do, and Princess has made no money for years and has a value close to zero, while others who do it differently make a lot of money (market caps of €1b and €1.5bn for Ferretti and Sanlorenzo respectively, for example). I'm constantly amazed by how both sets of Princess shareholders have let the management keep doing the same thing and hoping it will produce profits, while the outturn year after year has been zero or close to zero value and cash generation. I wish them well but it could be so much better if someone with a new vision set out on a 3 year turnaround of the business.

 

[John100156]

You get a sense of the pride and enthusiasm of the chap as he walks through each facility, excellent video, makes you proud, manufacturing at its best in the UK.

 

[PaulRainbow]

Brings back many memories for me too of visiting boat factories.

A very interesting tour by Aquaholic. On some detailed points, I wondered at 20:00 onwards whether the 80 hull is cored below the waterline. It certainly looks that way, and also it looks like the stringers (that are added after the infusion) are on top of cored sections of hull. Hard to tell from the pics, but a bit worrying.

Ross keeps calling stringers "spray rails". He mixed himself up at 20:07 then continued to get it wrong at 20:58, 21:43, 32:56

When you stand back the most striking thing is that so much is going on - far too much is going on. Princess's "make it in house" approach is the opposite of what many others do, and Princess has made no money for years and has a value close to zero, while others who do it differently make a lot of money (market caps of €1b and €1.5bn for Ferretti and Sanlorenzo respectively, for example). I'm constantly amazed by how both sets of Princess shareholders have let the management keep doing the same thing and hoping it will produce profits, while the outturn year after year has been zero or close to zero value and cash generation. I wish them well but it could be so much better if someone with a new vision set out on a 3 year turnaround of the business.

I said the same when we watched it last night.

One thing stood out to me, was the wiring harnesses. A bunch of blokes making individual harnesses, depending on things like how many TVs were fitted ! Ross took pride in saying they were all one off, custom harnesses. Must cost a fortune to make them that way, rather than a production line for a single harness that fits all boats in the model range, if it only has 4 TVs instead of 5, you just have an empty socket in the harness. Etc.

 

[Hurricane]

I think that the "in house" aspect was "over played" - in front of Nick's camera.
I know our visit was a long time ago but I'm sure that there is still a lot outsourced.
AFAIK, all the soft furnishings are still made by Lang and Potter who had a workshop in the Newport Street factory - I think they still have.
I take JFM's point though, it must be possible to have a new vision and turn the finances around.
In an operation like that, there has got to be enough "fat" to make significant changes.
But I suppose you could look at it as strong local employer - when we visited, Princess was the second largest employer in Plymouth.

 

[jrudge]

So one figures sums up the issue. 1,000,000 sq ft and 215 boats per annum. So they use 5000 sq ft per boat built. Given they should turn the space serval times over then something somewhere is very very wrong - which is reflected in the results.

Then the more you watch you just wonder why they in source all of this stuff and also why they dont use more generic parts - wet bar or whatever - across the range.

 

[MapisM]

I wondered at 20:00 onwards whether the 80 hull is cored below the waterline. It certainly looks that way, and also it looks like the stringers (that are added after the infusion) are on top of cored sections of hull.
Hard to tell from the pics, but a bit worrying.

Normally, my curiosity on these videos is overwhelmed by boredom PDQ, so I very rarely watched them up to the end.
But your comment amazed me (I mean, it really did, not in the way Nick keeps saying "amazing" throughout the video... ), so I had to check that out.

And unbelievably, I think you are spot on, for two reasons:
First, at 20:35 the Prin guy says specifically that the yellow(ish) parts are where the coring foam is - and that clearly is also along the hull bottom, including the areas where stringers are attached to the inner side of the core - urgh!
Second, at 23:25 it's even clearer what they do (on an 85' hull being prepared for infusion), i.e. solid GRP below the w/line ONLY along the keel and chines (and wherever the hull must be holed, obviously: shafts, fins, b/t).
BTW; aside from the "usual" concerns about that technique, I found also surprising how they extract the hull from the mould (22:40), by pulling its whole weight from a couple of bulkhead glued to the hull bottom.
How that doesn't develop cracks between the hull and the bulkhead/stringers joint upon extraction, is a mistery to me.

Oh, and apropos of infusion, I'm not sure to agree with the Prin guy comment from 31:30 onward, who calls it a "science" because if a moulded part is designed to take 600kg of resin, that's what it gets - as opposed to relying on manpower.
Now, as a matter of fact, the problem with manual lamination has NEVER been whether in one of those bits the worker uses 580kg and 620kg on the next.
That's neither here nor there, in the grand scheme. It's the homogeneity of lamination that really matters, and makes all the difference in the world.
And of course, homogeneity in manual lamination depends on the workers skills/experience - possibly even on how well they slept the night before.
But if sucking exactly 600kg of resin with the infusion process would be enough to assure perfection, we would have never heard of resin starvation and hull delamination - both potentially catastrophic problems that were unheard of with solid GRP manually laminated. Not to mention that the infusion preparation is still a manual process anyhow.

As a last sort of folkloristic note from someone who isn't EN mother tongue, hence happy to be corrected if wrong:
When at 36:00 Nick says "you can't have a mould that kind of comes down and back under itself", what he actually means in plain English is "you can't have an undercut", 'innit?

 

[jfm]

So one figures sums up the issue. 1,000,000 sq ft and 215 boats per annum. So they use 5000 sq ft per boat built. Given they should turn the space serval times over then something somewhere is very very wrong - which is reflected in the results.

Then the more you watch you just wonder why they in source all of this stuff and also why they dont use more generic parts - wet bar or whatever - across the range.

Yup. There were other worrying figures too.

@John100156 sadly this isn't a case of manufacturing at its best/makes you proud, imho. It's a sad case of a company that was and could now be great but whose value has been taken to near-zero by bad management, starting with Chris Gates' costly building at 40m (a place where the brand name simply does not reach) and disastrous insourcing. The latter being no doubt in attempt to control the quality, but the actual outcome has been value destruction.

The boats themselves are excellent - I'm talking only about the business and the need to restructure it heavily.

 

[jfm]

I think that the "in house" aspect was "over played" - in front of Nick's camera.
I know our visit was a long time ago but I'm sure that there is still a lot outsourced.
AFAIK, all the soft furnishings are still made by Lang and Potter who had a workshop in the Newport Street factory - I think they still have.
I take JFM's point though, it must be possible to have a new vision and turn the finances around.
In an operation like that, there has got to be enough "fat" to make significant changes.
But I suppose you could look at it as strong local employer - when we visited, Princess was the second largest employer in Plymouth.

Though they stretch it a bit far - if you spend €10m on their biggest boats (X or Y95) you still get a lang and potter sofa. That isn't ok, but Princess can't grasp it.

 

[jfm]

BTW; aside from the "usual" concerns about that technique, I found also surprising how they extract the hull from the mould (22:40), by pulling its whole weight from a couple of bulkhead glued to the hull bottom.
How that doesn't develop cracks between the hull and the bulkhead/stringers joint upon extraction, is a mistery to me.



As a last sort of folkloristic note from someone who isn't EN mother tongue, hence happy to be corrected if wrong:
When at 36:00 Nick says "you can't have a mould that kind of comes down and back under itself", what he actually means in plain English is "you can't have an undercut", 'innit?

On the pirst point, they inject air (and maybe water) to separate the hull from the mould, so it's not as bad as you are thinking. You can see the air injection points in the video where the cored hull bottom was visible.

On the second point, yes he meant undercut. Nick doesn't claim to be a technical guy Actually you can have undercuts if you make a split mould, but often its as easy to manually join two pieces as Princess were doing.

 

[MapisM]

On the pirst point, they inject air (and maybe water) to separate the hull from the mould, so it's not as bad as you are thinking.

Yup, I know, but even without a major detachment effort, the sheer hull weight is bound to put quite a bit of load along the connection between those bulkheads and the hull bottom.
A load in tension BTW, while bulkhead and stringers are designed to withstand compression load only - or if anything, a bit of shear, but not tension.
Now, I'm not pretending to teach them to suck eggs, and obviously they wouldn't do that if they should re-resin joint cracks after every extraction.
But I've seen other ways to pull up the hull, with purposedly made hooking points which inspired much more confidence.
Or for bigger stuff, moulds in two halves.
Regardless, as you pointed out, stringers and bulkheads attached to the inner GRP layer of a cored hull remain questionable to say the least.

 

[Shifty]

I did enjoy the video but it so reminded me of a visit to Blackpool to see my TVR Griffih being built in a bunch of old sheds.

 

[Sandy]

Gosh what a gushing video!

I've been on three visits to Princess, two with my engineering institute and one with my wife's accounting institute. Each visit was very different, I preferred the engineering ones (we spoke the same language) and got a much clearer understanding of the new technology (and issues) that the yard was introducing. The accounting visit was a lot more gushing, and staff were a tad surprised when I asked 'technical' questions.

P.S. A few years ago Aquaholic was making a video for his channel on one of the Princess boats at King Point Marina. I was very tempted to get out my bagpipes and practice a few pibrochs.

 

[doug748]

I did enjoy the video but it so reminded me of a visit to Blackpool to see my TVR Griffih being built in a bunch of old sheds.

The factories look excellent to me and very well managed.

Just to add to the dodgy, uninformed remarks made so far:

It seems to me that the biggest, and massive, outflow of cash is on the design and tooling for new models. They don't stick around long enough to earn their development costs. Is this essential: you boys would know?

I'd be asking that marketing guy if a flagship model/s could be cobbled up with a long term reputation; and bury the design costs into something that will keep giving. It could, for example, hang it's cap on the sustainability hook and add a bit of gravitas.
All the other bloody things, in a huge inventory of boats seem the same to me.

.

 

[petem]

I remember visiting the Fairline factory in 1999 to see our new boat being built. At the time, the dealer referred to it as the "Fairline Museum", such was the working practices. I doubt I would see much difference in any of the FL/SS/Pr factories now.

Perhaps some of the custom components might actually have been designed on a computer and might even be symmetrical where this is intended!

 

[Hurricane]

I doubt I would see much difference in any of the FL/SS/Pr factories now.

Surely infusion moulding is a huge difference.
Boat lighter - hence smaller engines - hence lighter engines - etc...

 

[MapisM]

The factories look excellent to me and very well managed.
Just to add to the dodgy, uninformed remarks made so far...

That's great news, from your viewpoint.
Since no investor is showing interest in the company, you might well be able to take them over for a song!

 

[PowerYachtBlog]

That's great news, from your viewpoint.
Since no investor is showing interest in the company, you might well be able to take them over for a song!

Were they not sold to KPS Capital Partners, a US-based private equity firm in Winter 2023.

I do not think they are for sale at this time, although with an equity firm they always are.