RC Updates deal with project our team is doing some successes and learning from what we do.




Currently under construction and for sale is the Alurib tender.

This is a very peculiar vessel that can be used like a normal leisure RIB or for more heavy duty uses at diving schools, marine research expeditions, and military applications.

 

One of the main advantages of a non-inflatable tube is that it provides a large and well distributed storage area.

In our case we are studying a foldable wings system to turn this vessel into a small-size hydrofoil that can serve both the leisure market and the workboat market.

The price range of the vessel depending on the installed power will vary from 150k-250k euros.

Contact us for more details

 

 

Whereas the total growth of Luxury goods in 2016 grew only of 4% according to Bain and Co.. Preliminary estimates we are making see the growth of the global yachting industry at 19-20% for 2017 and we believe it is very likely, given the general sentiment of the boat show season, that this yacht market growth will be sustained for the year 2018.

The size segment of Yachts above 30 meter in length as tracked by Super Yacht Intelligence shows a significant growth as well.

Note that the RED represents (orders) the LIGHT BLUE represents yachts under construction and the GREEN represents delivered/launched vesselsSuperyacht Orders vs Delivery

It is also interesting to notice even the average size of large yachts has grown from 47.8 meters in 2013 to 51.6 meters in 2017.

Avg Size of SuperYacht growth 2017

Of the overall yacht market 86% is the share of motorboats whereas the sailboat market has a market share of 12% and the remaining 2% is represented by rigid inflatable boats also referred to as RIBs.

The refit and repairs market is well over 1 billion euros in value worldwide.

The top 10 countries in terms of number of boats per 1000 citizens is shown in the graph (source: DELOITTE) below and is topped by northern European countries that have a strong nautical culture and a solid GDP per capita.

 

Boat Ownership:1000

 

 

The production of yacht going in 2017-18 will be distributed largely as in the previous years.

World Production Of Yacht 2017

 

 

The fleet of supeyacht is set to grow significantly towards 2022 with a related growth of the whole yachting economic system that is driven by large yachts.

Superyacht unit growth by 2022

It is important to note that because the average size of super yachts is growing the number of deliveries could be decreasing.

 

Thanks to the Americas Cup and the associated media exposure, it seems that ,at last, the world of leisure boats and yachting is ready to start considering hydrofoil technology as a viable technology. We could not be happier as the Rodriquez family pioneered hydrofoils more than 65 years ago (see History). Indeed, in 1951 when Carlo Rodriquez was building the first commercial hydrofoil for passenger transportation purposes no marine transportation company was farsighted enough to see the future which was being written. Carlo, had to start his own high speed transportation company(SNAV) to prove to his shipyard’s prospective clients that hydrofoils were not a dream but a solid reality. The company was SNAV (Società Navigazione Alta Velocità) and it was effectively raising the bar by an average 20-25 knots in every-day marine passenger transportation.

The model was the Pt20 which was travelling at with 70 passengers at 30 knots cruise speed powered by one 1350hp engine built on specs by Mercedes marine (now MTU).

Only in the 70s a yacht version of the Pt20 built by Rodriquez was used by the James Bond’s movie Thunderball (See footage below)

Many years later the now super famous company Hobie Cat headed by Greg Ketterman  applied hydrofoil technology to build the world’s fastest production sailboat, namely the Trifoiler. Then noticed that the market wasn’t yet ready to enjoy this speeds as hydrofoils were yet not considered safe enough.

In 2013-2015 it seems that the time is finally right for the boaters to start foiling and quite a few shipyards are moving the first steps around this technology. One example in the sailing world is Gun Boats (https://www.gunboat.com) with their

G4 foiled catamaran.Sailing hydrofoil Gunboat g4

We are not sure that catamaran are the safest route to take when hydrofoil technology is applied for the general public outside of the insanity of the race boats of the Americas cup, however, it’s certainly through experimenting that innovative solutions and control systems will be developed and implemented in the leisure boat industry.

Hydrofoil technology is essentially aimed at maximising the efficiency and lowering consumption and we did not have to wait to long to see the first few examples of electric hydrofoils for private use such as the Quadrofoil. (image below)

Quadrofoil- electric hydrofoil

In mid-sized power catamaran there are mild applications of foil technology (Foil assisted boats) like the on of South Africa based company  Hysucraft (www.hysucraft.com).

Even in the world of board sports the trend seem to have exploded with foiled kite surf, windsurfs, regular surf board.

In 2015, we actually stumbled upon an event dedicated to hydrofoil technology called the Foiling Week (www.foilingweek.com) and we plan on getting more information on the topic and keep you up to date.

The trend on hydrofoil technology is doubtlessly here and most probably it’s here to stay and will be be significantly boosted by the media exposure of the Americas Cup.

At Rodriquez Consulting we hope that this trend will not be taken lightly from a technical point of view. It would be best to avoid the ‘Just add foils’ type of attitude of shipyards venturing in this technology. After all when the Rodriquez shipyards started building hydrofoils those were operated and maintained by professionals and the R&D behind each project was significant. A professional, serious approach to hydrofoil technology guaranteed many decades of safe operations (some of the earliest hydrofoils are still moving passengers around the world).

The hydrofoil technology implemented on pleasure boats requires an even more thoughtful technical process to avoid vessels that are not technically sound to go out on the market to non-experienced pleasure boaters.

If your company is considering investing or is already developing a hydrofoil project, go ahead and contact us for technical and strategic support.  Hydrofoils[@]RodriquezConsulting.com  or use the contact us form

Upyacht.com

In the world of the sharing economy some companies have come out trying to shake up the yachting industry but in our view all of them have not really cracked the fundamentals that would really enable them to do so.

A lot of the companies we have seen that position themselves towards the Airbnb of boating have done a very good job in listing boats and trying to simplify the booking process for renting a boat. One of the few issues we have seen is that very few of them have truly understood that boating is not the process of renting an asset but rather that of delivering an experience.

In the the difference between renting out assets (boats/yachts) and delivering and experience lays the recent success of companies like The Yacht Week which in truth haven’t revolutionised the market but have identified a target and have made a great job at delivering to a specific 20-somthing target market that essentially requires a alcohol-loaded boating experience.

UPyacht has caught our attention because of its unique membership model which isn’t a share of ownership on a specific boat which would inevitably come with liability and maintenance costs, but simply credit to enjoy boating experiences or boat-time to do whatever one decides to do. Membership makes very much sense in this business because, let’s face it, going on a yacht by yourself isn’t much fun unless you are solo-sailor doing The Race. So here they come with a fresh new concept and from what we have seen a solid set-up.

We have looked into their founding membership offer (agreement and T&C) which seems to be a limited offer that does make a lot of sense to us: In brief a one-time fee of £15000 gives you access to £5000 per year for 3 years worth of yachting with vessels ranging from 30 to 75feet (9-21 meters), their charter rate are published and this level of membership gives you 20% off of their listed price (including the high season) giving customers the possibility to choose their itinerary, share it with other members and friends. All their Yacht are skippered and experiences are from what we see orientated to a wide variety of customers, ultimately it makes sense for a family or even a company to purchase this kind of memberships where the credit can be used for a family holidays on a sailing catamaran or a wakeboarding weekend for the youngsters.  

For more information go to Upyacht.com and let us have your comment if you book a holiday with them.

On June 30th 2015 in Hamburg, Germany, our managing director Leopoldo Rodriquez will be the opening speaker and co-chairman of the Superyacht Interior international conference. He was asked to speak about the future of the superyacht industry, market data and trends. 

The presentation will touch upon some key elements of the super yacht market and its buyers. Leopoldo will speak about the hard data of the prospective global spending on superyachts by 2020 and also about the changing characteristics of the UHNWI target group towards 2020.

For a copy of his presentation please subscibe to our email newsletter it will be available for download after the conference. 

We are delighted to announce that our client the new brokerage firm Yacht Nation has been successful in finding a buyer for the super yacht Nena built by Cantieri di Pisa as reported by Boat International in this article.

The sale of 36m  yacht Nena 1 has been the joint effort of Yachtzoo representing the seller and Yacht Nation who found and represented the buyer throughout the whole transaction.  The negotiation started at asking price of 5.9 million euros.

Built in GRP by Cantieri di Pisa  and designed by Carlo Galeazzi, the vessel was launched in 2009. This yacht for sale was the first in Cantieri Di Pisa’s Akhir 118 semi-custom series and was refitted in 2011.

M/Y Nina 1 Cantieri Di Pisa 36m

Rodriquez Consulting has been supporting the entrepreneurs of Yacht Nation since the start. We have delivered a comprehensive market study to support the client in choosing the right size segment to focus his marketing efforts. Furthermore, the Rodriquez Consulting creative team is directly responsible for the creation (name and brand) of the new brand Yacht Nation.

Yacht Nation might also be a new brand, however, it already has a lot of experience in yacht brokerage, management and sales. Thanos Skliris (Principal) came to Rodriquez Consulting with the objective of creating and yacht brokerage, yacht management and yacht charter firm deploying with much more accuracy and planning than the majority of its competitors.

YACHT NATION logo

The Yacht Nation project started where all business should, from in-depth yacht market research and data analysis provided by Rodriquez Consulting. Our team then analysed the historic trends of brokerage boats in the size segment and geographic areas we had selected to determine the lead to sale goal to set. Furthermore, the Yacht Nation team provided the historic record of all brokerage yachts in their careers to enable Rodriquez Consulting to do an ad-hoc analysis of their professional sale performance.  The result was a clear plan to go forward.

The action plan Rodriquez Consulting created for Yacht Nation was clear and well defined providing for a clear guideline for implementation. Our proprietary M.A.P. – I.D.  (Marketing Action Plan Implementation Dashboard) provided Yacht Nation’s team the following

  1. Marketing Actions to be taken
  2. Tools to use
  3. Frequency of actions
  4. Monitoring tools, KPIs and other metrics
  5. Defined Brand guidelines and branded materials

In the future, Rodriquez Consulting will support Yacht Nation in its marketing efforts to generate the company sales and structural growth.

If you would like to know more about what Rodriquez Consulting can do for your firm and book a preliminary consultation contact us 

Yacht Technology

Hi-Tech Italian Yacht

One would think that an industry like the yacht industry where clients are Ultra High Net Worth individuals money is no object and that should reflect on pushing technology boundaries forward. Yet if you look at yachts of 2014, there is  a great deal of automation, interior design gimmicks like moving tv and wireless connected devices, but is there truly any game changing technology.

In my view the yacht industry should be what F1 is for the car industry, where new technologies get tested and then translated into widely available technologies. However, as we all know the yachting industry isn’t made of high R&D budgets and mass production of units and therefore this does not happen. On the other hand, one of the greatest business challenges of running a shipyard is securing business that is stable and ongoing which is not easy to do, simply because yachts are probably the ultimate luxury item and therefore marked as a non-urgent expense during periods of economic uncertainty.  As a consequence, some shipyards that can’t afford to rely on new builds alone, go heavily into the service industry extending their areas of operations to Yacht Charters, Yacht refits and after sale services, maintenance and repairs, which are let’s face it all hardly scalable business lines and merely a way to maximise revenue from existing assets and human resources.

What’s the solution then?  Technology is one and more broadly IP is another one.  If you look around you’ll notice that very few big brands in the yacht industry capitalise on their IP or even have any protected IP other than their brand.

Why there is so little valuable innovation and so little game changing technologies coming from the Yacht industry while there is so much coming from the aviation industry.

The initially-criticised Luca Bassani, founder of Wally Yachts who clearly had a background in another industry managed to make a mark in the yacht industry in much less time then most established brands have done, but why? Surely he had enough money to afford it but also had the courage to dare, to re-think things that were traditionally done in a certain way and to challenge and bend the rules enough to give his brand a unique identity in the industry. It’s also noteworthy that almost from the start the Wally brand was on sky equipment and other hi-tech products in different markets.

Yet that of Wally was a slightly different take on the industry but was it really game changing? No it wasn’t. The use of fiberglass is, hydrofoil technology is, as for tubeless tyres on cars and direct fuel ignition.

In brief the role of innovators in the yacht industry is really left to the power units, propulsion systems, electronics manufacturers, and chemical companies; in other words companies like MTU, Caterpiller, ZF, MAN, Raymarine, Akzo Nobel(aka International Yacht Paint) etc.. Whereas companies like Hamilton jet almost prefer not to look at the yacht industry as a whole and focus on commercial marine applications.  Main yacht manufacturing brands seem not to be motivated enough to invest in R&D to develop IP that can be employed in the industry and licensed into other industries providing for a sound and stable scalable economic growth. Why is that?

Leave us a comment we would be glad to take your point of view on the topic of innovation. Why do you think the Yacht Industry is so backward?

We just got back from Monaco Yacht Show 2014 and our first impressions were rather positive considering the general optimism that we noticed while speaking with a number of yacht builders, yacht owners, yacht brokers, designers and component manufacturer. Boero Group export and marketing manager who was attending the show at the Boero Yacht Coatings boot told us Monaco usually doesn’t fall back on expectations and that his first impression was positive. Luciano Bregola CEO of Isa Yachts was confident about future orders and the MTU sales team was very busy with a series of meetings with existing clients and prospective ones. It seems that the Italian builder are getting busier than they were expecting.  As one would expect a few companies that were exhibitors in the previous years were not present at the show, some had reduced their presence however, some others were there ready to do business with the usual enthusiasm and refreshed brands such as that of ISA Yachts that has undertaken a minor re-branding. The first thing we noticed, however, is that the organisers of MYS 2014 have decided to raise the price of tickets to 150 euros per day and 500 for a multi-day pass, which in fairness we believe it is a good move in order to discourage visitors whose pockets and interest are not strong enough to pay this price to visit the show. We all know large yacht owners, brokers and yacht builder don’t quite like their vessels to be too crowded with non-potential customers also due to the extensive time it takes to visit such large vessels so thumbs up for MYS 2014 edition.

On the other hand of the ticket price increase which for the record more than doubled compared to the previous 60 euro price, all exhibitors had plenty of free invitations to invite their prospects, media professionals and other types of interested parties which made it easy for all of us in the industry to invite the right audience to the show.

The show ground was also extended thanks to the the new Yacht Club de Monaco area with its impressive structure in the north part of Port Hercule that also gave much more useful space for exhibitors needing water space and logistic support.

We also noticed a slight reduction in the number of Yacht Magazines which we believe is an appropriate market adjustment considering the lowered marketing budgets most companies say to have this upcoming years.

This 2014 edition of Monaco Yacht Show at first glance seemed to be a positive and optimistic one from a sales point of view, however, we will get back on the specific topic with more updates after exhibitors have settled the show frenzy and will talk to us regarding the real output of the show in terms of business. Don’t forget to sign up to our newsletter to receive updates

From a marketing point of view we were pleasently surprised by a number of interesting techniques to move visitors on the show ground such as Edminston’s Gelato invitations served by the now famous team of red-dressed models, the traditional Feadship panama hats distributed for free to visitors,

Although we are only at the very beggining of 2014 at Rodriquez Consulting we have been working on a new comprehensive Yacht Market Research 2013-2014. Thanks to the requests that came from several new Yachting industry players and private equity funds willing to invest in the industry on its way to regaining strenght and competitiveness, RC decided to start the works on a new research and related forecasts for 2016. At Rodriquez Consulting we can confidendtly say that we have a track record of supplying reliable data and most importantly solid forecasts thanks to our team experience in the industry which exceeds 100 years in total.

Some highlights of the main topics of the research:

1.1
Current market size
Sizing and trends of the last ten years, segmented by geographical area, yacht types (sail, motor, flybridge open etc), and length range : Volume, Value and Average prices
2.2
SuperYacht Focus
SuperYachts Specific Focus: building technologies segmentation, hull shapes, materials and production approach (custom steel construction VS fiberglass semi custom construction)
2.3
Geography and Market Forecasts
Size segmentation and geographic segmentation Yacht Market Forecasts 2016: Geographical areas, Yacht Sizes and Types
2.4
The Yacht Service Market
Sizing and Trends by business lines (e.g.: refit vs maintenance) competitive landscape of the Yacht Service Market main players by geographical area
2.5
Yacht Charter Industry
Yacht Charter Industry segmented into type yachts and sizes by geographical area of interest, plus trends and forecasts by geographical area

At Rodriquez Consulting we usually tailor our research material to our client specific business focus, please contact us for more information: Market@RodriquezConsulting.com

As every year at Rodriquez Consulting we are working to satisfy our clients need for reliable data on the Global Yacht Market. Unlike a few reasonably reliable researchers and data providers that focus solely on the Super Yacht segment (24mt or 30mt and above) we take into account the whole of the boating industry. Althought the word yacht sounds to be referring to only the very large boats we believe yachting starts at as little as 8 meters, furthermore, given the volume of units that the smaller size segments can reach we believe it is of utmost importance to provide reliable data on these smaller size segments.

Our Yacht Market Research for 2014 will include 2 years forecasts to 2016, and the market drivers. The global Yacht Market is driven by the macro segment of HNWI (high net worth individuals) , however, we sub-segment this macro cathegory into 5 more cathegories to give a much more useful indication to yacht manufacturers on their specific target market. At Rodriquez Consulting we take into account the Affluent segment with a reference price of yachts in the 3 million euros, the Entry HNWIs, Very HNWIs with a reference price of yachts in the 5 to 30 million euros range and the Ultra HNWIs and Billionaires. The latter segment accounts for approximately 15% of the total market value of the Yachting industry with a reference price per yacht above 35 Million euros

In our 2014 research we will also be researching in details the private marinas, the yacht charter market with a double focus on both the sail yachts and the motor yachts but also the component suppliers and the repair and maintanace businesses.

In 2013 we have established business relationships with some of the industry players of the global Yachting and Marine Anti-fouling paint industry, which has allowed us to develop a substabtial expertise in the coating industry.

If you would like to receive more information regarding our Yacht Market Research 2014 and the forecarst please don’t hesitate to email us at MARKET@RodriquezConsulting.com or give us a call +44 7445 30 86 22

If you would like to see a sample of previous work please click here on this Super Yacht Market Report Sample